monit - utility for monitoring services on a Unix system

monit [options] {arguments}

monit is a utility for managing and monitoring processes, files, directories and devices on a Unix system. Monit conducts automatic maintenance and repair and can execute meaningful causal actions in error situations. E.g. monit can start a process if it does not run, restart a process if it does not respond and stop a process if it uses to much resources. You may use monit to monitor files, directories and devices for changes, such as timestamps changes, checksum changes or size changes.

Monit is controlled via an easy to configure control file based on a free-format, token-oriented syntax. Monit logs to syslog or to its own log file and notifies you about error conditions via customizable alert messages. Monit can perform various TCP/IP network checks, protocol checks and can utilize SSL for such checks. Monit provides a http(s) interface and you may use a browser to access the monit program.

The behavior of monit is controlled by command-line options and a run control file, ~/.monitrc, the syntax of which we describe in a later section. Command-line options override .monitrc declarations.

The following options are recognized by monit. However, it is recommended that you set options (when applicable) directly in the .monitrc control file.

-c file Use this control file

-d n Run as a daemon once per n seconds

-g Set group name for start, stop, restart and status

-l logfile Print log information to this file

-p pidfile Use this lock file in daemon mode

-s statefile Write state information to this file

-I Do not run in background (needed for run from init)

-t Run syntax check for the control file

-v Verbose mode, work noisy (diagnostic output)

-H [filename] Print MD5 and SHA1 hashes of the file or of stdin if the filename is omitted; monit will exit afterwards

-V Print version number and patch level

-h Print a help text

In addition to the options above, monit can be started with one of the following action arguments; monit will then execute the action and exit without transforming itself to a daemon.

start all Start all services listed in the control file and enable monitoring for them. If the group option is set, only start and enable monitoring of services in the named group.

start name Start the named service and enable monitoring for it. The name is a service entry name from the monitrc file.

stop all Stop all services listed in the control file and disable their monitoring. If the group option is set, only stop and disable monitoring of the services in the named group.

stop name Stop the named service and disable its monitoring. The name is a service entry name from the monitrc file.

restart all Stop and start all services. If the group option is set, only restart the services in the named group.

restart name Restart the named service. The name is a service entry name from the monitrc file.

monitor all Enable monitoring of all services listed in the control file. If the group option is set, only start monitoring of services in the named group.

monitor name Enable monitoring of the named service. The name is a service entry name from the monitrc file. Monit will also enable monitoring of all services this service depends on.

unmonitor all Disable monitoring of all services listed in the control file. If the group option is set, only disable monitoring of services in the named group.

unmonitor name Disable monitoring of the named service. The name is a service entry name from the monitrc file. Monit will also disable monitoring of all services that depends on this service.

status Print full status information for each service.

summary Print short status information for each service.

reload Reinitialize a running monit daemon, the daemon will reread its configuration, close and reopen log files.

quit Kill a monit daemon process

validate Check all services listed in the control file. This action is also the default behavior when monit runs in daemon mode.

You may use monit to monitor daemon processes or similar programs running on localhost. Monit is particular useful for monitoring daemon processes, such as those started at system boot time from /etc/init.d/. For instance sendmail, sshd, apache and mysql. In difference to many monitoring systems, monit can act if an error situation should occur, e.g.; if sendmail is not running, monit can start sendmail or if apache is using to much system resources (e.g. if a DoS attack is in progress) monit can stop or restart apache and send you an alert message. Monit does also monitor process characteristics, such as; if a process has become a zombie and how much memory or cpu cycles a process is using.

You may also use monit to monitor files, directories and devices on localhost. Monit can monitor these items for changes, such as timestamps changes, checksum changes or size changes. This is also useful for security reasons - you can monitor the md5 checksum of files that should not change.

You may even use monit to monitor remote hosts. First and foremost monit is a utility for monitoring and mending services on localhost, but if a service depends on a remote service, e.g. a database server or an application server, it might by useful to be able to test a remote host as well.

monit is configured and controlled via a control file called monitrc. The default location for this file is ~/.monitrc. If this file does not exist, monit will try /etc/monit/monitrc, then /etc/monitrc, then /usr/local/etc/monitrc and finally ./monitrc.

A monit control file consists of a series of service entries and global option statements in a free-format, token-oriented syntax. Comments begin with a # and extend through the end of the line. There are three kinds of tokens in the control file: grammar keywords, numbers and strings.

On a semantic level, the control file consists of three types of statements:

1. Global set-statements

A global set-statement starts with the keyword set and the item to configure.

2. Global include-statement

The include statement consists of the keyword include and a glob string.

3. One or more service entry statements.

A service entry starts with the keyword check followed by the service type.

This is the hello galaxy version of a monit control file:

 #
 # monit control file
 #

 set daemon 120 # Poll at 2-minute intervals
 set logfile syslog facility log_daemon
 set alert foo@bar.baz
 set httpd port 2812 and use address localhost
     allow localhost   # Allow localhost to connect
     allow admin:monit # Allow Basic Auth

 check process apache 
    with pidfile "/usr/local/apache/logs/httpd.pid"
    start program = "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
    stop program = "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
    if 2 restarts within 3 cycles then timeout
    if totalmem > 100 Mb then alert
    if children > 255 for 5 cycles then stop
    if cpu usage > 95% for 3 cycles then restart
    if failed port 80 protocol http then restart
    group server
    depends on httpd.conf, httpd.bin

 check file httpd.conf 
     with path /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf
     # Reload apache if the httpd.conf file was changed
     if changed checksum 
        then exec "/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl graceful"

 check file httpd.bin 
     with path /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
     # Run /watch/dog in the case that the binary was changed
     # and alert in the case that the checksum value recovered
     # later
     if failed checksum then exec "/watch/dog"
        else if recovered then alert

 include /etc/monit/mysql.monitrc
 include /etc/monit/mail/*.monitrc

This example illustrate a service entry for monitoring the apache web server process as well as related files. The meaning of the various statements will be explained in the following sections.

monit will log status and error messages to a log file. If syslog is given as a value for the -l command-line switch (or the keyword set logfile syslog is found in the control file) monit will use the syslog system daemon to log messages. To turn off logging, simply do not set the logfile in the control file (and of course, do not use the -l switch)

The -d interval command-line switch runs monit in daemon mode. You must specify a numeric argument which is a polling interval in seconds.

In daemon mode, monit detaches from the console, puts itself in the background and runs continuously, monitoring each specified service and then goes to sleep for the given poll interval.

       Simply invoking

              monit -d 300

will poll all services described in your ~/.monitrc file every 5 minutes.

It is possible and also strongly recommended to set the poll interval in your ~/.monitrc file by using 'set daemon n', where n is an integer number of seconds. If you do this, monit will always start in daemon mode (as long as no action arguments are given).

Monit makes a per-instance lockfile in daemon mode. If you need more monit instances, you will need more configuration files, each pointing to its own lockfile.

Calling monit with a monit daemon running in the background sends a wakeup signal to the daemon, forcing it to check services immediately.

The quit argument will kill a running daemon process instead of waking it up.

Monit can run and be controlled from init. If monit should crash, init will re-spawn a new monit process. Using init to start monit is probably the best way to run monit if you want to be certain that you always have a running monit daemon on your system. (It's obvious, but never the less worth to stress; Make sure that the control file does not have any syntax errors before you start monit from init. Also, make sure that if you run monit from init, that you do not start monit from a startup scripts as well).

To setup monit to run from init, you can either use the 'set init' statement in monit's control file or use the -I option from the command line. Here is a sample /etc/inittab entry for monit:

  # Run monit in standard run-levels
  mo:2345:respawn:/usr/sbin/monit -Ic /etc/monit/monitrc

After you have modified init's configuration file, you can run the following command to re-examine /etc/inittab and start monit:

  telinit q

For systems without telinit:

  kill -1 1

If monit is used to monitor services that are also started at boot time (e.g. services started via SYSV init rc scripts or via inittab) then in some situations a race condition can occur. That is; if a service is slow to start, monit can assume that the service is not running and possibly try to start it and raise an alert, while, in fact the service is already about to start or already in its startup sequence. Please see the FAQ for solutions to this problem.

The monit control file, monitrc, can include additional files. This feature helps to maintain a certain structure or to place repeating settings into one file. Include statements can be placed at virtually any spot. The syntax is the following:

  INCLUDE globstring

The globstring is any kind of string as defined in glob(7). Thus, you can refer to a single file or you can load several files at once. In case you want to use whitespace in your string the globstring need to be embedded into quotes (') or double quotes ("). For example,

  INCLUDE "/etc/monit/monit configuration files/printer.*.monitrc"

loads any file matching the single globstring. If the globstring matches a directory instead of a file, it is silently ignored.

INCLUDE statements in included files are parsed as in the main control file.

If the globstring matches several results, the files are included in a non sorted manner. If you need to rely on a certain order, you might need to use single include statements.

Service entries in the control file, monitrc, can be grouped together by the group statement. The syntax is simply (keyword in capital):

  GROUP groupname

With this statement it is possible to group similar service entries together and manage them as a whole. Monit provides functions to start, stop and restart a group of services, like so:

To start a group of services from the console:

  monit -g <groupname> start

To stop a group of services:

  monit -g <groupname> stop

To restart a group of services:

  monit -g <groupname> restart

Monit supports three monitoring modes per service: active, passive and manual. See also the example section below for usage of the mode statement.

In active mode, monit will monitor a service and in case of problems monit will act and raise alerts, start, stop or restart the service. Active mode is the default mode.

In passive mode, monit will passively monitor a service and specifically not try to fix a problem, but it will still raise alerts in case of a problem.

For use in clustered environments there is also a manual mode. In this mode, monit will enter active mode only if a service was brought under monit's control, for example by executing the following command in the console:

  monit start sybase 
  (monit will call sybase's start method and enable monitoring)

If a service was not started by monit or was stopped or disabled for example by:

  monit stop sybase 
  (monit will call sybase's stop method and disable monitoring)

monit will not monitor the service. This allows for having services configured in monitrc and start it with monit only if it should run. This feature can be used to build a simple failsafe cluster. To see how, read more about how to setup a cluster with monit using the heartbeat system in the examples sections below.

Monit will raise an email alert on state change for constant value test types, either failure or recovery, for following conditions:

 o A service timed out
 o A service does not exist
 o A service related data access problem
 o A service related program execution problem
 o A service is of invalid object type
 o A icmp problem
 o A port connection problem
 o A resource statement match
 o A file checksum problem
 o A file size problem
 o A file/directory timestamp problem
 o A file/directory/device permission problem
 o A file/directory/device uid problem
 o A file/directory/device gid problem

For variable value test types will monit send alert each time the monitored object changed. This involves:

 o A file checksum changed
 o A file size changed
 o A file content match
 o A file/directory timestamp changed

You should use an alert statement to notify monit that you want alert messages sent to an email address. If you do not specify an alert statement, monit will not send alert messages.

There are two forms of alert statement:

 o Global - common for all services
 o Local  - per service

In both cases you can use more than one alert statement. In other words, you can send many different emails to many different addresses. (Just to make it clear, in case you now got a new business idea; monit is not suitable for sending spam).

Recipients in the global and in the local lists are alerted when an failed, recovery or changed event occurs. If the same email address is in the global and in the local list, monit will send only one alert. Local (per service) defined alert email addresses override global addresses in case of a conflict. Finally, you may choose to only use a global alert list, a local per service list or both.

The full syntax for the alert statement is as follows (keywords are in capital):

In case of an event on any monitored service monit will send an alert to recipients in the global list which have registred interest for the event type.

SET ALERT mail-address [{events}] [MAIL-FORMAT {mail-format}] [REMINDER number]

Simply using the following in the global section of monitrc:

 set alert foo@bar

will send a default email to the address foo@bar whenever an event occurred on any service. Such an event may be that a service timed out, a service was doesn't exist (on failure) or service does exist (on recovery) and so on.

Each service can have its own recipient list.

ALERT mail-address [{events}] [MAIL-FORMAT {mail-format}] [REMINDER number]

If you only want an alert message sent for certain events for certain service(s), for example only for timeout events or only if a service died, then postfix the alert-statement with a filter block, respectively:

 check process myproc with pidfile /var/run/my.pid
  ...
  alert foo@bar only on { timeout } and 
  alert foo@bar only on { nonexist }

(only and on are noise keywords, ignored by monit. As a side note; Noise keywords are used in the control file grammar to make an entry resemble English and thus make it easier to read (or, so goes the philosophy). The full set of available noise keywords are listed below in the Control File section)

It is also possible to combine alert events and send mail to different email addresses depending on the events. Like so:

 alert foo@bar { nonexist, timeout, resource, icmp, connection }
 alert security@bar on { checksum, permission, uid, gid }
 alert manager@bar

This will send an alert message to foo@bar whenever a nonexist, timeout, resource or connection problem occurs and a message to security@bar if a checksum, permission, uid or gid problem occurs. And finally, a message to manager@bar whenever any error event occurs.

The following alert-statement:

 alert foo@bar {uid
                gid
                size
                nonexist
                data
                icmp
                invalid
                exec
                changed
                timeout
                resource
                checksum
                match
                timestamp
                connection
                permission}

is equivalent to:

 alert foo@bar

The following example will alert foo@bar on all events on all services by default, except the service mybar which will send an alert only on timeout. The trick is based on the fact that local definition of the same recipient overrides the global setting (including registered events and mail format):

 set alert foo@bar

 check process myfoo with pidfile /var/run/myfoo.pid

 check process mybar with pidfile /var/run/mybar.pid
  alert foo@bar only on { timeout }

monit provides a default mail message layout that is short and to the point. Here's an example of a standard alert mail sent by monit:

 From: monit@tildeslash.com
 Subject: monit alert -- Does not exist apache 
 To: hauk@tildeslash.com
 Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 02:33:03 +0200

 Does not exist Service apache

        Date:   Thu, 04 Sep 2003 02:33:03 +0200
        Action: restart
        Host:   www.tildeslash.com

 Your faithful employee,
 monit

If you want to, you can change the format of this message with the optional mail-format statement. The syntax for this statement is as follows:

 mail-format {
      from: monit@localhost
   subject: $SERVICE $EVENT at $DATE
   message: Monit $ACTION $SERVICE at $DATE on $HOST. 
            Yours sincerely,
            monit
 }

Where the keyword from: is the email address monit should pretend it is sending from. It does not have to be a real mail address, but it must be a proper formated mail address, on the form: name@domain. The keyword subject: is for the email subject line. The subject must be on only one line. The message: keyword denotes the mail body. If used, this keyword should always be the last in a mail-format statement. The mail body can be as long as you want and must not contain the '}' character.

All of these format keywords are optional but you must provide at least one. Thus if you only want to change the from address monit is using you can do:

 alert foo@bar with mail-format { from: bofh@xyzzy.no }

From the previous example you will notice that 4 special variables was used. If used, they will be substituted and expanded into the text with these values:

•

$EVENT A string describing the event that occurred. The values are fixed and are: Event: Failure state: Recovery state:

 EVENT_CHANGED    "Changed"                "Changed back"
 EVENT_CHECKSUM   "Checksum failed"        "Checksum passed"
 EVENT_CONNECTION "Connection failed"      "Connection passed"
 EVENT_DATA       "Data access error"      "Data access succeeded"
 EVENT_EXEC       "Execution failed"       "Execution succeeded"
 EVENT_GID        "GID failed"             "GID passed"
 EVENT_ICMP       "ICMP failed"            "ICMP passed"
 EVENT_INVALID    "Invalid type"           "Type passed"
 EVENT_MATCH      "Regex match"            "No regex match"
 EVENT_NONEXIST   "Does not exist"         "Exists"
 EVENT_PERMISSION "Permission failed"      "Permission passed"
 EVENT_RESOURCE   "Resource limit matched" "Resource limit passed"
 EVENT_SIZE       "Size failed"            "Size passed"
 EVENT_TIMEOUT    "Timeout"                "Timeout recovery"
 EVENT_TIMESTAMP  "Timestamp failed"       "Timestamp passed"
 EVENT_UID        "UID failed"             "UID passed"

•

$SERVICE The service entry name in monitrc

•

$DATE The current time and date (RFC 822 date style).

•

$HOST The name of the host monit is running on

•

$ACTION The name of the action which was done. Action names are fixed and are: Action: Name:

 ACTION_ALERT     "alert"
 ACTION_EXEC      "exec"
 ACTION_MONITOR   "monitor"
 ACTION_RESTART   "restart"
 ACTION_START     "start"
 ACTION_STOP      "stop"
 ACTION_UNMONITOR "unmonitor"

It is possible to set a standard mail format with the following global set-statement (keywords are in capital):

SET MAIL-FORMAT {mail-format}

Format set with this statement will apply to every alert statement that does not have its own specified mail-format. This statement is most useful for setting a default from address for messages sent by monit, like so:

 set mail-format { from: monit@foo.bar.no }

Monit by default sends just one error notification when the service failed and another one when it has recovered. If you want to be notified more then once in the case that the service remains failed, you can use reminder option of alert statement (keywords are in capital):

ALERT ... [WITH] REMINDER [ON] number [CYCLES]

For example if you want to be notified each tenth cycle when the service remains failed, you can use:

  alert foo@bar with remainder on 10 cycles

If you want to be notified each failed cycle, you can use:

  alert foo@bar with remainder on 1 cycle

The mail server monit should use to send alert messages is defined with a global set statement (keywords are in capital and optional statements in [brackets]):

 SET MAILSERVER {host name [PORT port]|ip-address [PORT port]}+ 
                [with TIMEOUT X SECONDS]

The port statement allows to use SMTP servers other then those listening on port 25. In case it is omitted port 25 is used for the connection.

As you can see, it is possible to set several SMTP servers. If monit cannot connect to the first server in the list it will try the second server and so on. Monit has a default 5 seconds connection timeout and if the SMTP server is slow, monit could timeout when connecting or reading from the server. You can use the optional timeout statement to explicit set the timeout to a higher value if needed. Here is an example for setting several mail servers:

 set mailserver mail.tildeslash.com, mail.foo.bar port 10025, 
     localhost with timeout 15 seconds

Here monit will first try to connect to the server mail.tildeslash.com, if this server is down monit will try mail.foo.bar on port 10025 and finally localhost. We do also set an explicit connect and read timeout; If monit cannot connect to the first SMTP server in the list within 15 seconds it will try the next server and so on. The set mailserver .. statement is optional and if not defined monit defaults to use localhost as the SMTP server.

monit provides a service timeout mechanism for situations where a service simply refuses to start or respond over a longer period. In cases like this, and particularly if monit's poll-cycle is low, monit will simply increase the machine load by trying to restart the service.

The timeout mechanism monit provides is based on two variables, i.e. the number the service has been started and the number of poll-cycles. For example, if a service had x restarts within y poll-cycles (where x <= y) then monit will timeout and not (re)start the service on the next cycle. If a timeout occurs monit will send you an alert message if you have register interest for this event.

The syntax for the timestamp statement is as follows (keywords are in capital):

IF NUMBER RESTART NUMBER CYCLE(S) THEN TIMEOUT

Where the first number is the number of service restarts and the second, the number of poll-cycles. If the number of cycles was reached without a timeout, the service start-counter is reset to zero. This provides some granularity to catch exceptional cases and do a service timeout, but let occasional service start and restarts happen without having an accumulated timeout.

Here is an example where monit will timeout (not check the service) if the service was restarted 2 times within 3 cycles:

 if 2 restarts within 3 cycles then timeout

To have monit check the service again after a timeout, run 'monit monitor service' from the command line. This will remove the timeout lock in the daemon and make the daemon start and check the service again.

Monit provides several tests you may utilize in a service entry to test a service. Basicaly here are two classes of tests: variable and constant object tests.

Constant object tests are related to failed/passed state. In the case of error, monit will watch whether the failed parameter will recover - in such case it will handle recovery related action. General format:

IF <TEST> [[<X>] [TIMES WITHIN] <Y> CYCLES] THEN ACTION [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] [TIMES WITHIN] <Y> CYCLES] THEN ACTION]

For constant object tests if the <TEST> should validate to true, then the selected action is executed each cycle the condition remains true. The value for comparision is constant. Recovery action is evalueated only once (on failed->passed state change only). The 'ELSE IF PASSED' part is optional - if omitted, monit will do alert action on recovery by default. The alert is delivered only once on each state change unless overriden by 'reminder' alert option.

Variable object tests beggins with 'IF CHANGED' statement and serves for monitoring of object, which property can change legaly - monit watches whether the value will change again. You can use it just for alert or to involve some automatic action, as for example to reload monitored process after its configuration file was changed. Variable tests are supported for 'checksum', 'size', 'pid, 'ppid' and 'timestamp' tests only, if you consider that other tests can be useful in variable form too, please let us know.

IF CHANGED <TEST> [[<X>] [TIMES WITHIN] <Y> CYCLES] THEN ACTION

For variable object tests if the <TEST> should validate to true, then the selected action is executed once and monit will watch for another change. The value for comparision is variable - the last result becomes actual value, which is compared in future cycles. The alert is delivered each time the condition becomes true.

You can restrict the event ratio needed to change the state:

... [[<X>] [TIMES WITHIN] <Y> CYCLES] ...

This part is optional and is supported by all testing rules. It defines how many event occurences during how many cycles are needed to trigger the following action. You can use it in several ways - the core syntax is:

 [<X>] <Y> CYCLES

It is possible to use filling words which give the rule better first-sight sense. You can use any filling words such as: FOR, TIMES, WITHIN, thus for example:

 if failed port 80 for 3 times within 5 cycles then alert

or

 if failed port 80 for 10 cycles then unmonitor

When you don't specify the <X>, it equals to <Y> by default, thus the rule applies when <Y> consecutive cycles of inverse event occured (relatively to the current service state).

When you omit it at all, monit will by default change state on first inverse event, which is equivalent to this notation:

 1 times within 1 cycles

It is possible to use this option for failed, passed/recovered or changed rules. More complex examples:

 check device rootfs with path /dev/hda1
  if space usage > 80% 5 times within 15 cycles then alert else if passed for 10 cycles then alert
  if space usage > 90% for 5 cycles then exec '/try/to/free/the/space'
  if space usage > 99% then exec '/stop/processess'

Note that the maximal cycles count which can be used in the rule is limited by the size of 'long long' data type on your platform. This provides 64 cycles on usual platforms currently. In the case that you use unsupported value, the configuration parser will tell you the limits during monit startup.

You must select an action to be executed from this list:

•

ALERT sends the user an alert event on each state change (for constant object tests) or on each change (for variable object tests).

•

RESTART restarts the service and sends an alert. Restart is conducted by first calling the service's registered stop method and then the service's start method.

•

START starts the service by calling the service's registered start method and send an alert.

•

STOP stops the service by calling the service's registered stop method and send an alert. If monit stops a service it will not be checked by monit anymore nor restarted again later. To reactivate monitoring of the service again you must explicitly enable monitoring from the web interface or from the console, e.g. 'monit monitor apache'.

•

EXEC may be used to execute an arbitrary program and send an alert. If you choose this action you must state the program to be executed and if the program require arguments you must enclose the program and its arguments in a quoted string. You may optionally specify the uid and gid the executed program should switch to upon start. For instance:

 exec "/usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh"
      as uid nobody and gid nobody

This may be useful if the program to be started cannot change to a lesser privileged user and group. This is typically needed for Java Servers. Remember, if monit is run by the superuser, then all programs executed by monit will be started with superuser privileges unless the uid and gid extension was used.

•

MONITOR will enable monitoring of the service and send an alert.

•

UNMONITOR will disable monitoring of the service and send an alert. The service will not be checked by monit anymore nor restarted again later. To reactivate monitoring of the service you must explicitly enable monitoring from monit's web interface or from the console using the monitor argument.

Monit can examine how much system resources a service or the system is using. This test may only be used within a process service entry in the monit control file.

Depending on process characteristics, services can be stopped or restarted and alerts can be generated. Thus it is possible to utilize systems which are idle and to spare system under high load.

The full syntax for the resource-statements used for resource testing is as follows (keywords are in capital and optional statements in [brackets]),

IF resource operator value [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

resource is a choice of CPU, MEMORY, CHILDREN, TOTALMEMORY, "LOADAVG([1min|5min|15min]):

CPU is the CPU usage of the process and its children in parts of hundred (percent).

MEMORY is the memory usage of the process without its child processes in either percent (of the systems total) or as an amount (Byte, kB, MB, GB).

CHILDREN is the number of child processes of the process.

TOTALMEMORY is the memory usage of the process and its child processes in either percent or as an amount (Byte, kB, MB, GB).

LOADAVG([1min|5min|15min]) refers to the system's load average. The load average is the number of processes in the system run queue, averaged over the specified time period.

operator is a choice of <, >, !=, == in C notation, gt, lt, eq, ne in shell sh notation and greater, less, equal, notequal in human readable form (if not specified, default is EQUAL).

value is either an integer or a real number (except for CHILDREN). For CPU, MEMORY and TOTALMEMORY you need to specify a unit. This could be % or if applicable B (Byte), kB (1024 Byte), MB (1024 KiloByte) or GB (1024 MegaByte).

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

To calculate the cycles, a counter is raised whenever the expression above is true and it is lowered whenever it is false (but not below 0). All counters are reset in case of a restart.

The following is an example to check that the CPU usage of a service is not going beyond 50% during five poll cycles. If it does, monit will restart the service:

 if cpu is greater than 50% for 5 cycles then restart

See also the example section below.

The checksum statement may only be used in a file service entry. If specified in the control file, monit will compute a md5 or sha1 checksum for a file.

The checksum test in constant form is used to verify that a file does not change. Syntax (keywords are in capital):

IF FAILED [MD5|SHA1] CHECKSUM [EXPECT checksum] [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

The checksum test in variable form is used to watch for file changes. Syntax (keywords are in capital):

IF CHANGED [MD5|SHA1] CHECKSUM [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action

The choice of MD5 or SHA1 is optional. MD5 features a 256 bit and SHA1 a 320 bit checksum. If this option is omitted monit tries to guess the method from the EXPECT string or uses MD5 as default.

expect is optional and if used it specifies a md5 or sha1 string monit should expect when testing a file's checksum. If expect is used, monit will not compute an initial checksum for the file, but instead use the string you submit. For example:

 if failed checksum and 
    expect the sum 8f7f419955cefa0b33a2ba316cba3659
 then alert

You can, for example, use the GNU utility md5sum(1) or sha1sum(1) to create a checksum string for a file and use this string in the expect-statement.

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

The checksum statement in variable form may be used to check a file for changes and if changed, do a specified action. For instance to reload a server if its configuration file was changed. The following illustrate this for the apache web server:

 check file httpd.conf path /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf
     if changed sha1 checksum 
        then exec "/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl graceful"

If you plan to use the checksum statement for security reasons, (a very good idea, by the way) and to monitor a file or files which should not change, then please use constant form and also read the DEPENDENCY TREE section below to see a detailed example on how to do this properly.

Monit can also test the checksum for files on a remote host via the HTTP protocol. See the CONNECTION TESTING section below.

The timestamp statement may only be used in a file or directory service entry. If specified in the control file, monit will compute a timestamp for a file or directory.

The timestamp test in constant form is used to verify various timestamp conditions. Syntax (keywords are in capital):

IF TIMESTAMP [[operator] value [unit]] [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

The timestamp statement in variable form is simply to test an existing file or directory for timestamp changes and if changed, execute an action. Syntax (keywords are in capital):

IF CHANGED TIMESTAMP [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action

operator is a choice of <, >, !=, == in C notation, GT, LT, EQ, NE in shell sh notation and GREATER, LESS, EQUAL, NOTEQUAL in human readable form (if not specified, default is EQUAL).

value is a time watermark.

unit is either SECOND, MINUTE, HOUR or DAY (it is also possible to use SECONDS, MINUTES, HOURS, or DAYS).

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

The variable timestamp statement is useful for checking a file for changes and then execute an action. This version was written particularly with configuration files in mind. For instance, if you monitor the apache web server you can use this statement to reload apache if the httpd.conf (apache's configuration file) was changed. Like so:

 check file httpd.conf with path /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf
   if changed timestamp
      then exec "/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl graceful"

The constant timestamp version is useful for monitoring systems able to report its state by changing the timestamp of certain state files. For instance the iPlanet Messaging server stored process system updates the timestamp of:

 o stored.ckp
 o stored.lcu
 o stored.per

If a task should fail, the system keeps the timestamp. To report stored problems you can use the following statements:

 check file stored.ckp with path /msg-foo/config/stored.ckp
   if timestamp > 1 minute then alert

 check file stored.lcu with path /msg-foo/config/stored.lcu
   if timestamp > 5 minutes then alert

 check file stored.per with path /msg-foo/config/stored.per
   if timestamp > 1 hour then alert

As mentioned above, you can also use the timestamp statement for monitoring directories for changes. If files are added or removed from a directory, its timestamp is changed:

 check directory mydir path /foo/directory
  if timestamp > 1 hour then alert

or

 check directory myotherdir path /foo/secure/directory
  if timestamp < 1 hour then alert

The following example is a hack for restarting a process after a certain time. Sometimes this is a necessary workaround for some third-party applications, until the vendor fix a problem:

 check file server.pid path /var/run/server.pid
       if timestamp > 7 days 
          then exec "/usr/local/server/restart-server"

The size statement may only be used in a file service entry. If specified in the control file, monit will compute a size for a file.

The size test in constant form is used to verify various size conditions. Syntax (keywords are in capital):

IF SIZE [[operator] value [unit]] [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

The size statement in variable form is simply to test an existing file for size changes and if changed, execute an action. Syntax (keywords are in capital):

IF CHANGED SIZE [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action

operator is a choice of <, >, !=, == in C notation, GT, LT, EQ, NE in shell sh notation and GREATER, LESS, EQUAL, NOTEQUAL in human readable form (if not specified, default is EQUAL).

value is a size watermark.

unit is a choice of B,KB,MB,GB or long alternatives byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte. If it is not specified, byte unit is assumed by default.

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

The variable size test form is useful for checking a file for changes and send an alert or execute an action. Monit will register the size of the file at startup and monitor the file for changes. As soon as the value changed, monit will do specified action, reset the registered value to new result and continue to monitor, whether the size changed again.

One example of use for this statement is to conduct security checks, for instance:

 check file su with path /bin/su
       if changed size then exec "/sbin/ifconfig eth0 down"

which will cut the cable and stop a possible intruder from compromising the system further. This test is just one of many you may use to increase the security awareness on a system. If you plan to use monit for security reasons we recommend that you use this test in combination with other supported tests like checksum, timestamp, and so on.

The constant size test form may be useful in similar or different contexts. It can, for instance, be used to test if a certain file size was exceeded and then alert you or monit may execute a certain action specified by you. An example is to use this statement to rotate log files after they have reached a certain size or to check that a database file does not grow beyond a specified threshold.

To rotate a log file:

 check file myapp.log with path /var/log/myapp.log
    if size > 50 MB then 
       exec "/usr/local/bin/rotate /var/log/myapp.log myapp"

where /usr/local/bin/rotate may be a simple script, such as:

 #/bin/bash
 /bin/mv $1 $1.`date +%y-%m-%d`
 /usr/bin/pkill -HUP $2

Or you may use this statement to trigger the logrotate(8) program, to do an emergency rotate. Or to send an alert if a file becomes a known bottleneck if it grows behind a certain size because of limits in a database engine:

 check file mydb with path /data/mydatabase.db
       if size > 1 GB then alert

This is a more restrictive form of the first example where the size is explicitly defined (note that the real su size is system dependent):

 check file su with path /bin/su
       if size != 95564 then exec "/sbin/ifconfig eth0 down"

The match statement allows to check lines of file content against a regular expression (regex). In case of a match a action like an alarm is triggered. Syntax (keywords are in capital):

IF [NOT] MATCH {regex|path} [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action

regex is a string containing the extended regular expression. See also regex(7).

path is an absolute path to a file containing extended regular expression on every line. See also regex(7).

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

You can use the NOT statement to invert a match.

The content is only being checked every cycle. If content is being added and removed during between two check they are unnoticed.

On startup the read position is the file end. Upon file size decrease and inode change the read position is set to the file start.

Only lines ending with a newline character are inspected. Thus, lines are being ignored until they have been completed with this character.

Only the first 511 characters of a line are inspected any following is omitted.

IGNORE [NOT] MATCH {regex|path}

Lines matching an IGNORE are not inspected for later matches. IGNORE MATCH has always precedence over IF MATCH.

In first all IGNORE MATCH statements are evaluated in the order of there appearance. In second all IF MATCH statements are evaluated.

A real life example might look like this:

  check file syslog with path /var/log/syslog
    ignore match 
        "^\w{3} [ :0-9]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ monit\[[0-9]+\]:"
    ignore match /etc/monit/syslog.regex.ignore
    if match 
        "^\w{3} [ :0-9]{11} [._[:alnum:]-]+ mrcoffee\[[0-9]+\]:"
    if match /etc/monit/syslog.regex.alert then alert

Monit can test devices/file systems and check for space usage. This test may only be used within a device service entry in the monit control file.

Monit will check a device's total space usage. If you only want to check available space for non-superuser, you must set the watermark appropriately (i.e. total space minus reserved blocks for the superuser).

You can obtain (and set) the superuser's reserved blocks size, for example by using the tune2fs utility on Linux. On Linux 5% of available blocks are reserved for the superuser by default. To list the reserved blocks for the superuser:

 [root@berry monit]# tune2fs -l /dev/hda1| grep "Reserved block"
 Reserved block count:     319994
 Reserved blocks uid:      0 (user root)
 Reserved blocks gid:      0 (group root)

On solaris 10% of the blocks are reserved. You can also use tunefs on solaris to change values on a live filesystem.

The full syntax for the space statement is:

IF SPACE operator value unit [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

operator is a choice of <,>,!=,== in c notation, gt, lt, eq, ne in shell sh notation and greater, less, equal, notequal in human readable form (if not specified, default is EQUAL).

unit is a choice of B,KB,MB,GB, % or long alternatives byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, percent.

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

If supported by the file-system, you can use monit to test for inodes usage. This test may only be used within a device service entry in the monit control file.

If the device becomes unavailable, monit will call the entry's registered start method, if it is defined and if monit is running in active mode. If monit runs in passive mode or the start methods is not defined, monit will just send an error alert.

The syntax for the inode statement is:

IF INODE(S) operator value [unit] [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

operator is a choice of <,>,!=,== in c notation, gt, lt, eq, ne in shell sh notation and greater, less, equal, notequal in human readable form (if not specified, default is EQUAL).

unit is optional. If not specified, the value is an absolute count of inodes. You can use the % character or the longer alternative percent as a unit.

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

Monit can monitor the permissions for files, directories and devices. This test may only be used within a file, directory or device service entry in the monit control file.

The syntax for the permission statement is:

IF FAILED PERM(ISSION) octalnumber [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

octalnumber defines permissions for a file, a directory or a device.

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

The web interface will show a permission warning if the test failed.

We recommend that you use the UNMONITOR action in a permission statement. The rationale for this feature is security and that monit does not start a possible cracked program or script. Example:

 check file monit.bin with path "/usr/sbin/monit"
       if failed permission 0555 then unmonitor
       alert foo@bar

If the test fails, monit will simply send an alert and stop monitoring the file and propagate an unmonitor action upward in a depend tree.

monit can monitor the owner user id (uid) for files, directories and devices. This test may only be used within a file, directory or device service entry in the monit control file.

The syntax for the uid statement is:

IF FAILED UID user [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

user defines a user id either in numeric or in string form.

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

The web interface will show a uid warning if the test should fail.

We recommend that you use the UNMONITOR action in a uid statement. The rationale for this feature is security and that monit does not start a possible cracked program or script. Example:

 check file passwd with path /etc/passwd
       if failed uid root then unmonitor
       alert root@localhost

If the test fails, monit will simply send an alert and stop monitoring the file and propagate an unmonitor action upward in a depend tree.

monit can monitor the owner group id (gid) for files, directories and devices. This test may only be used within a file, directory or device service entry in the monit control file.

The syntax for the gid statement is:

IF FAILED GID user [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

user defines a group id either in numeric or in string form.

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

The web interface will show a gid warning if the test should fail.

We recommend that you use the UNMONITOR action in a gid statement. The rationale for this feature is security and that monit does not start a possible cracked program or script. Example:

 check file shadow with path /etc/shadow
       if failed gid root then unmonitor
       alert root@localhost

If the test fails, monit will simply send an alert and stop monitoring the file and propagate an unmonitor action upward in a depend tree.

monit tests the process id (pid) of processes for change. This test is implicit and monit will send alert in the case of failure by default.

You may override the default action using below rule (it may only be used within a process service entry in the monit control file).

The syntax for the pid statement is:

IF CHANGED PID [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

This test is useful to detect possible process restarts which has occured in the timeframe between two monit testing cycles. In the case that the restart was fast and the process provides expected service (i.e. all tests passed) you will be notified that the process was replaced.

For example sshd daemon can restart very quickly, thus if someone changes its configuration and do sshd restart outside of monit control, you will be notified that the process was replaced by new instance (or you can optionaly do some other action such as preventively stop sshd).

Another example is MySQL Cluster which has its own watchdog with process restart ability. You can use monit for redundant monitoring. Monit will just send alert in the case that the MySQL cluster restarted the node quickly.

Example:

 check process sshd with pidfile /var/run/sshd.pid
       if changed pid then exec "/my/script"
       alert root@localhost

monit tests the process parent id (ppid) of processes for change. This test is implicit and monit will send alert in the case of failure by default.

You may override the default action using below rule (it may only be used within a process service entry in the monit control file).

The syntax for the ppid statement is:

IF CHANGED PPID [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

This test is useful to detect possible process parent change. This may happen normaly only in the case that the process parent exited.

Example:

 check process myproc with pidfile /var/run/myproc.pid
       if changed ppid then exec "/my/script"
       alert root@localhost

Monit is able to perform connection testing via networked ports or via Unix sockets. A connection test may only be used within a process or within a host service entry in the monit control file.

If a service listens on one or more sockets, monit can connect to the port (using either tcp or udp) and verify that the service will accept a connection and that it is possible to write and read from the socket. If a connection is not accepted or if there is a problem with socket read/write, monit will assume that something is wrong and execute a specified action. If monit is compiled with openssl, then ssl based network services can also be tested.

The full syntax for the statement used for connection testing is as follows (keywords are in capital and optional statements in [brackets]),

IF FAILED [host] port [type] [protocol|{send/expect}+] [timeout] [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

or for Unix sockets,

IF FAILED [unixsocket] [type] [protocol|{send/expect}+] [timeout] [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

host:HOST hostname. Optionally specify the host to connect to. If the host is not given then localhost is assumed if this test is used inside a process entry. If this test was used inside a remote host entry then the entry's remote host is assumed. Although host is intended for testing name based virtual host in a HTTP server running on local or remote host, it does allow the connection statement to be used to test a server running on another machine. This may be useful; For instance if you use Apache httpd as a front-end and an application-server as the back-end running on another machine, this statement may be used to test that the back-end server is running and if not raise an alert.

port:PORT number. The port number to connect to

unixsocket:UNIXSOCKET PATH. Specifies the path to a Unix socket. Servers based on Unix sockets, always runs on the local machine and does not use a port.

type:TYPE {TCP|UDP|TCPSSL}. Optionally specify the socket type monit should use when trying to connect to the port. The different socket types are; TCP, UDP or TCPSSL, where TCP is a regular stream based socket, UDP is a datagram socket and TCPSSL specify that monit should use a TCP socket with SSL when connecting to a port. The default socket type is TCP. If TCPSSL is used you may optionally specify the SSL/TLS protocol to be used and the md5 sum of the server's certificate. The TCPSSL options are:

 TCPSSL [SSLAUTO|SSLV2|SSLV3|TLSV1] [CERTMD5 md5sum]

proto(col):PROTO {protocols}. Optionally specify the protocol monit should speak when a connection is established. At the moment monit knows how to speak HTTP, SMTP, FTP, POP, IMAP, MYSQL, NTP3, NNTP, SSH, DWP, LDAP2, LDAP3, RDATE, DNS, POSTFIX-POLICY, APACHE-STATUS and RSYNC and if you have compiled monit with ssl support, monit can also speak HTTPS, FTPS, POPS and IMAPS. If the server's protocol is not found in this list, simply do not specify the protocol and monit will utilize a default test, including testing if it is possible to read and write to the port. This default test is in most cases more than good enough to deduce if the server behind the port is up or not.

The protocol statement is:

 [PROTO(COL) {name} [REQUEST {"/path"} [with CHECKSUM checksum]]

As you can see, you may specify a request after the protocol, at the moment only the HTTP protocol supports the request option. See also below for an example.

In addition to the standard protocols, the APACHE-STATUS protocol is a test of a specific server type, rather than a generic protocol. Server performance is examined using the status page generated by Apache's mod_status, which is expected to be at its default address of http://www.example.com/server-status. Currently the APACHE-STATUS protocol examines the percentage of Apache child processes which are

 o logging (loglimit)
 o closing connections (closelimit)
 o performing DNS lookups (dnslimit)
 o in keepalive with a client (keepalivelimit)
 o replying to a client (replylimit)
 o receiving a request (requestlimit)
 o initialising (startlimit)
 o waiting for incoming connections (waitlimit)
 o gracefully closing down (gracefullimit)
 o performing cleanup procedures (cleanuplimit)

Each of these quantities can be compared against a value relative to the total number of active Apache child processes. If the comparison expression is true the choosen action is performed.

The apache-status protocol statement is formally defined as (keywords in uppercase):

 PROTO(COL) {limit} OP PERCENT [OR {limit} OP PERCENT]*

where {limit} is one or more of: loglimit, closelimit, dnslimit, keepalivelimit, replylimit, requestlimit, startlimit, waitlimit gracefullimit or cleanuplimit. The operator OP is one of: [<|=|>].

You can combine all of these test into one expression or you can choose to test a certain limit. If you combine the limits you must or' them together using the OR keyword.

Here's an example were we test for a loglimit more than 10 percent, a dnslimit over 25 percent and a wait limit less than 20 percent of processes. See also more examples below in the example section.

 protocol apache-status 
                loglimit > 10% or
                dnslimit > 50% or
                waitlimit < 20%
 then alert

Obviously, do not use this test unless the httpd server you are testing is Apache Httpd and mod_status is activated on the server.

send/expect: {SEND|EXPECT} string .... If monit does not support the protocol spoken by the server, you can write your own protocol-test using send and expect strings. The SEND statement sends a string to the server port and the EXPECT statement compares a newline terminated string read from the server with the string given in the expect statement. If your system supports POSIX regular expressions, you can use regular expressions in the expect string, see regex(7) to learn more about the types of regular expressions you can use in an expect string. Otherwise the string is used as it is. The send/expect statement is:

 [{SEND|EXPECT} "string"]+

Note that monit will send a string as it is, and you must remember to include CR and LF in the string sent to the server if the protocol expect such characters to terminate a string (most text based protocols used over Internet does). Likewise monit will read newline terminated strings from the server or up to 256 bytes from the server and use this string when comparing the expect string. If the server sends strings terminated by CRLF, (i.e. \r\n) you must also remember to add the same terminating characters to the string you expect from the server. Finally, send/expect can be used with TCP stream sockets and UNIX sockets but not with TCP udp sockets.

timeout:with TIMEOUT x SECONDS. Optionally specifies the connect and read timeout for the connection. If monit cannot connect to the server within this time it will assume that the connection failed and execute the specified action. The default connect timeout is 5 seconds.

action is a choice of ALERT, RESTART, START, STOP, EXEC, MONITOR or UNMONITOR.

Connection testing using the URL notation

You can test a HTTP server using the compact URL syntax. This test also allow you to use POSIX regular expressions to test the content returned by the HTTP server.

The full syntax for the URL statement is as follows (keywords are in capital and optional statements in [brackets]):

  IF FAILED URL ULR-spec
     [CONTENT {==|!=} "regular-expression"]
     [TIMEOUT number SECONDS] [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] 
     THEN action
     [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

Where URL-spec is an URL on the standard form as specified in RFC 2396:

 <protocol>://<authority><path>?<query>

Here is an example on an URL where all components are used:

 http://user:password@www.foo.bar:8080/document/?querystring#ref

If a username and password is included in the URL monit will attempt to login at the server using Basic Authentication.

Testing the content returned by the server is optional. If used, you can test if the content match or does not match a regular expression. Here's an example on how the URL statement can be used in a check service:

 check host FOO with address www.foo.bar
      if failed url 
         http://user:password@www.foo.bar:8080/?querystring
         and content == 'action="j_security_check"'
      then ...

Monit will look at the content-length header returned by the server and download this amount before testing the content. That is, if the content-length is more than 1Mb or this header is not set by the server monit will default to download up to 1 Mb and not more.

Only the http(s) protocol is supported in an URL statement. If the protocol is https monit will use SSL when connecting to the server.

Remote host ping test

In addition monit can perform ICMP Echo tests in remote host checks. The icmp test may only be used in a check host entry and monit must run with super user privileges, that is, the root user must run monit. The reason is that the icmp test utilize a raw socket to send the icmp packet and only the super user is allowed to create a raw socket.

The full syntax for the ICMP Echo statement used for ping testing is as follows (keywords are in capital and optional statements in [brackets]):

  IF FAILED ICMP TYPE ECHO
     [COUNT number] [WITH] [TIMEOUT number SECONDS] [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES]
     THEN action
     [ELSE IF PASSED [[<X>] <Y> CYCLES] THEN action]

The rules for action and timeout are the same as those mentioned above in the CONNECTION TESTING section. The count parameter specifies how many consecutive echo requests will be send to the host in one cycle. In the case that no reply came within timeout frame, monit reports error. When at least one reply was received, the test will pass. Monit sends by default three echo requests in one cycle to prevent the random packet loss from generating false alarm (i.e. up to 66% packet loss is tolerated). You can set the count option to different value, which can serve as error ratio. For example in the case that you require 100% ping success, you can set the count to 1 (i.e. just one attempt will be send, when the packet was lost, then error will be reported).

An icmp ping test is useful for testing if a host is up, before testing ports at the host. If an icmp ping test is used in a check host entry, this test is run first and if the ping test should fail we assume that the connection to the host is down and monit does not continue to test any ports. Here's an example:

 check host xyzzy with address xyzzy.org
       if failed icmp type echo count 5 with timeout 15 seconds 
          then alert
       if failed port 80 proto http then alert
       if failed port 443 type TCPSSL proto http then alert
       alert foo@bar

In this case, if the icmp test should fail you will get one alert and only one alert as long as the host is down, and equally important, monit will not test port 80 and port 443. Likewise if the icmp ping test should succeed (again) monit will continue to test both port 80 and 443.

Keep in mind though that some firewalls can block icmp packages and thus render the test useless.

Examples

To check a port connection and receive an alert if monit cannot connect to the port, use the following statement:

  if failed port 80 then alert

In this case the machine in question is assumed to be the default host. For a process entry it's localhost and for a remote host entry it's the address of the remote host. Monit will conduct a tcp connection to the host at port 80 and use tcp by default. If you want to connect with udp, you can specify this after the port-statement;

 if failed port 53 type udp protocol dns then alert

Monit will stop trying to connect to the port after 5 seconds and assume that the server behind the port is down. You may increase or decrease the connect timeout by explicit add a connection timeout. In the following example the timeout is increased to 15 seconds and if monit cannot connect to the server within 15 seconds the test will fail and an alert message is sent.

  if failed port 80 with timeout 15 seconds then alert

If a server is listening to a Unix socket the following statement can be used:

 if failed unixsocket /var/run/sophie then alert

A Unix socket is used by some servers for fast (interprocess) communication on localhost only. A Unix socket is specified by a path and in the example above the path, /var/run/sophie, specifies a Unix socket.

If your machine answers for several virtual hosts you can prefix the port statement with a host-statement like so:

 if failed host www.sol.no port 80 then alert
 if failed host 80.69.226.133 port 443 then alert
 if failed host kvasir.sol.no port 80 then alert

And as mentioned above, if you do not specify a host-statement, localhost or address is assumed.

Monit also knows how to speak some of the more popular Internet protocols. So, besides testing for connections, monit can also speak with the server in question to verify that the server works. For example, the following is used to test a http server:

 if failed host www.tildeslash.com port 80 proto http 
    then restart

Some protocols also support a request statement. This statement can be used to ask the server for a special document entity.

Currently only the HTTP protocol module supports the request statement, such as:

 if failed host www.myhost.com port 80 protocol http 
    and request "/data/show.php?a=b&c=d"
 then restart

The request must contain an URI string specifying a document from the http server. The string will be URL encoded by monit before it sends the request to the http server, so it's okay to use URL unsafe characters in the request. If the request statement isn't specified, the default web server page will be requested.

You can also test the checksum for documents returned by a http server. You can use either MD5 sums:

 if failed port 80 protocol http 
    and request "/page.html"
        with checksum 8f7f419955cefa0b33a2ba316cba3659 
 then alert

Or you can use SHA1 sums:

 if failed port 80 protocol http 
    and request "/page.html"
        with checksum e428302e260e0832007d82de853aa8edf19cd872 
 then alert

monit will compute a checksum (either MD5 or SHA1 is used, depending on length of the hash) for the document (in the above case, /page.html) and compare the computed checksum with the expected checksum. If the sums does not match then the if-tests action is performed, in this case alert. Note that monit will not test the checksum for a document if the server does not set the HTTP Content-Length header. A HTTP server should set this header when it server a static document (i.e. a file). A server will often use chunked transfer encoding instead when serving dynamic content (e.g. a document created by a CGI-script or a Servlet), but to test the checksum for dynamic content is not very useful. There are no limitation on the document size, but keep in mind that monit will use time to download the document over the network so it's probably smart not to ask monit to compute a checksum for documents larger than 1Mb or so, depending on you network connection of course. Tip; If you get a checksum error even if the document has the correct sum, the reason may be that the download timed out. In this case, explicit set a longer timeout than the default 5 seconds.

As mentioned above, if the server protocol is not supported by monit you can write your own protocol test using send/expect strings. Here we show a protocol test using send/expect for an imaginary Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves protocol:

 if failed host cave.persia.ir port 4040
    send "Open, Sesame!\r\n"
    expect "Please enter the cave\r\n"
    send "Shut, Sesame!\r\n"
    expect "See you later [A-Za-z ]+\r\n"
 then restart

The TCPSSL statement can optionally test the md5 sum of the server's certificate. You must state the md5 certificate string you expect the server to deliver and upon a connect to the server, the server's actual md5 sum certificate string is tested. Any other symbol but [A-Fa-f0-9] is being ignored in that sting. Thus it is possible to copy and paste the output of e.g. openssl. If they do not match, the connection test fails. If the ssl version handshake does not work properly you can also force a specific ssl version, as we demonstrate in this example:

 if failed host shop.sol.no port 443 
    type TCPSSL SSLV3 # Force monit to use ssl version 3
    # We expect the server to return this  md5 certificate sum
    # as either 12-34-56-78-90-AB-CD-EF-12-34-56-78-90-AB-CD-EF
    # or e.g.   1234567890ABCDEF1234567890ABCDEF
    # or e.g.   1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef
    # what ever come in more handy (see text above)
    CERTMD5 12-34-56-78-90-AB-CD-EF-12-34-56-78-90-AB-CD-EF
    protocol http 
 then restart

Here's an example where a connection test is used inside a process entry:

 check process apache with pidfile /var/run/apache.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
       stop program = "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
       if failed host www.tildeslash.com port 80 then restart
       alert foo@bar.baz

Here, a connection test is used in a remote host entry:

 check host up2date with address ftp.redhat.com
       if failed port 21 and protocol ftp then alert
       alert foo@bar.baz

Since we did not explicit specify a host in the above test, monit will connect to port 21 at ftp.redhat.com. Apropos, the host address can be specified as a dotted IP address string or as hostname in the DNS. The following is exactly[*] the same test, but here an ip address is used instead:

 check host up2date with address 66.187.232.30
       if failed port 21 and protocol ftp then alert
       alert foo@bar.baz

[*] Well, not quite, since we specify an ip-address directly we will bypass any DNS round-robin setup, but that's another story.

For more examples, see the example section below.

If specified in the control file, monit will start a monit daemon with http support. From a Browser you can then start and stop services, disable or enable service monitoring as well as view the status of each service. Also, if monit logs to its own file, you can view the content of this logfile in a Browser.

The control file statement for starting a monit daemon with http support is a global set-statement:

set httpd port 2812

And you can use this URL, http://localhost:2812/, to access the daemon from a browser. The port number, in this case 2812, can be any number that you are allowed to bind to.

If you have compiled monit with openssl, you can also start the httpd server with ssl support, using the following expression:

 set httpd port 2812
     ssl enable
     pemfile /etc/certs/monit.pem

And you can use this URL, https://localhost:2812/, to access the monit web server over an ssl encrypted connection.

The pemfile, in the example above, holds both the server's private key and certificate. This file should be stored in a safe place on the filesystem and should have strict permissions, that is, no more than 0700.

In addition, if you want to check for client certificates you can use the CLIENTPEMFILE statement. In this case, a connecting client has to provided a certificate known by monit in order to connect. This file also needs to have all necessary CA certificates. A configuration could look like:

 set httpd port 2812
     ssl enable
     pemfile /etc/certs/monit.pem
     clientpemfile /etc/certs/monit-client.pem

By default self signed client certificates are not allowed. If you want to use a self signed certificate from a client it has to be allowed explicitly with the ALLOWSELFCERTIFICATION statement.

For more information on how to use monit with SSL and for more information about certificates and generating pem files, please consult the README.SSL file accompanying the software.

If you only want the http server to accept connect requests to one host addresses you can specify the bind address either as an IP number string or as a hostname. In the following example we bind the http server to the loopback device. In other words the http server will only be reachable from localhost:

  set httpd port 2812 and use the address 127.0.0.1

or

  set httpd port 2812 and use the address localhost

If you do not use the ADDRESS statement the http server will accept connections on any/all local addresses.

It is possible to hide monit's httpd server version, which apears in the httpd header and error pages under normal circumstances. This way you can hide the version from users, which don't have access to monit httpd:

  set httpd port 2812
    ...
    signature {enable|disable}

Use disable to hide the server signature - monit will only report its name (e.g. 'monit' instead of for example 'monit 4.2'). By default the version signature is enabled. It is worth noting that this option provides no security advantage and falls into the security through obscurity category.

If you remove the httpd statement from the config file, monit will stop the httpd server on configuration reload. Likewise if you change the port number, monit will restart the http server using the new specified port number.

The status page displayed by the monit web server is automatically refreshed with the same poll time set for the monit daemon.

Note:

We strongly recommend that you start monit with http support (and bind the server to localhost, only, unless you are behind a firewall). The built-in web-server is small and does not use much resources, and more importantly, monit can use the http server for interprocess communication between a monit client and a monit daemon.

For instance, you must start a monit daemon with http support if you want to be able to use the following console commands. (That is; most of the available console commands).

 'monit stop all'
 'monit start all'
 'monit stop service' 
 'monit start service' 
 'monit restart service' 
 'monit monitor service' 
 'monit unmonitor service' 
 'monit -g groupname stop all'
 'monit -g groupname start all'
 'monit -g groupname restart all' 
 'monit -g groupname monitor all' 
 'monit -g groupname unmonitor all'

If a monit daemon is running in the background we will ask the daemon (via the HTTP protocol) to execute the above commands. That is, the daemon is requested to start and stop the services. This ensures that a daemon will not restart a service that you requested to stop and that (any) timeout lock will be removed from a service when you start it.

monit supports two types of authentication schema's for connecting to the httpd server, (three, if you count SSL client certificate validation). Both schema's can be used together or by itself. You must choose at least one.

Host and network allow list

The http server maintains an access-control list of hosts and networks allowed to connect to the server. You can add as many hosts as you want to, but only hosts with a valid domain name or its IP address are allowed. If you specify a hostname that does not resolve, monit will write an error message in the console and not start. Networks require a network IP and a netmask to be accepted.

The http server will query a name server to check any hosts connecting to the server. If a host (client) is trying to connect to the server, but cannot be found in the access list or cannot be resolved, the server will shutdown the connection to the client promptly.

Control file example:

  set httpd port 2812
      allow localhost
      allow my.other.work.machine.com
      allow 10.1.1.1
      allow 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0
      allow 10.0.0.0/8

Clients, not mentioned in the allow list that tries to connect to the server are logged with their ip-address.

Basic Authentication

This authentication schema is HTTP specific and described in more detail in RFC 2617.

In short; a server challenge a client (e.g. a Browser) to send authentication information (username and password) and if accepted, the server will allow the client access to the requested document.

The biggest weakness with Basic Authentication is that the username and password is sent in clear-text (i.e. base64 encoded) over the network. It is therefor recommended that you do not use this authentication method unless you run the monit http server with ssl support. With ssl support it is completely safe to use Basic Authentication since all http data, including Basic Authentication headers will be encrypted.

monit will use Basic Authentication if an allow statement contains a username and a password separated with a single ':' character, like so; allow username:password. The username and password must be written in clear-text.

Alternatively you can use files in htpasswd format (one user:passwd entry per line), like so: allow [cleartext|crypt|md5] /path [users]. By default cleartext passwords are read. In case the passwords are digested it is necessary to specify the cryptographic method. In order to select the users their names can be added to the allow statement. Otherwise all users are added.

Example:

  set httpd port 2812
      allow hauk:password
      allow md5 /etc/httpd/htpasswd john paul ringo george

If you use this method together with a host list, then only clients from the listed hosts will be allowed to connect to the monit http server and each client will be asked to provide a username and a password.

Example:

  set httpd port 2812
      allow localhost
      allow 10.1.1.1
      allow hauk:password

If you only want to use Basic Authentication, then just provide allow entries with username and password, like so:

  set httpd port 2812
      allow hauk:password
      allow admin:password

Finally it is possible to define some users as read-only. A read-only user can read the monit web pages but will not get access to push-buttons and cannot change a service from the web interface.

  set httpd port 2812
      allow admin:password
      allow hauk:password read-only

A user is set to read-only by using the read-only keyword after username:password. In the above example the user hauk is defined as a read-only user, while the admin user has all access rights.

NB! a monit client will use the first username:password pair in an allow list and you should not define the first user as a read-only user. If you do, monit console commands will not work.

If you use Basic Authentication it is a good idea to set the access permission for the control file (~/.monitrc) to only readable and writable for the user running monit, because the password is written in clear-text. (Use this command, /bin/chmod 600 ~/.monitrc). In fact, since monit version 3.0, monit will complain and exit if the control file is readable by others.

Clients trying to connect to the server but supply the wrong username and/or password are logged with their ip-address.

If the monit command line interface is being used at least one cleartext password is necessary. Otherwise, the monit command line interface will not be able to connect to the monit daemon server.

If specified in the control file, monit can do dependency checking before start, stop, monitoring or unmonitoring of services. The dependency statement may be used within any service entries in the monit control file.

The syntax for the depend statement is simply:

DEPENDS on service[, service [,...]]

Where service is a service entry name, for instance apache or datafs.

You may add more than one service name of any type or use more than one depend statement in an entry.

Services specified in a depend statement will be checked during stop/start/monitor/unmonitor operations. If a service is stopped or unmonitored it will stop/unmonitor any services that depends on itself. Likewise, if a service is started, it will first stop any services that depends on itself and after it is started, start all depending services again. If the service is to be monitored (enable monitoring), all services which this service depends on will be monitored before enabling monitoring of this service.

Here is an example where we set up an apache service entry to depend on the underlying apache binary. If the binary should change an alert is sent and apache is not monitored anymore. The rationale is security and that monit should not execute a possibly cracked apache binary.

 (1) check process apache 
 (2)    with pidfile "/usr/local/apache/logs/httpd.pid"
 (3)    ...
 (4)    depends on httpd
 (5)
 (6) check file httpd with path /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
 (7)    if failed checksum then unmonitor
 (8)    alert foo@bar.baz

The first entry is the process entry for apache shown before (abbreviated for clarity). The fourth line sets up a dependency between this entry and the service entry named httpd in line 6. A depend tree works as follows, if an action is conducted in a lower branch it will propagate upward in the tree and for every dependent entry execute the same action. In this case, if the checksum should fail in line 7 then an unmonitor action is executed and the apache binary is not checked anymore. But since the apache process entry depends on the httpd entry this entry will also execute the unmonitor action. In short, if the checksum test for the httpd binary file should fail, both the check file httpd entry and the check process apache entry is set in un-monitoring mode.

A dependency tree is a general construct and can be used between all types of service entries and span many levels and propagate any supported action (except the exec action which will not propagate upward in a dependency tree for obvious reasons).

Here is another different example. Consider the following common server setup:

  WEB-SERVER -> APPLICATION-SERVER -> DATABASE -> FILESYSTEM
      (a)               (b)             (c)          (d)

You can set dependencies so that the web-server depends on the application server to run before the web-server starts and the application server depends on the database server and the database depends on the file-system to be mounted before it starts. See also the example section below for examples using the depend statement.

Here we describe how monit will function with the above dependencies:

If no servers are running

monit will start the servers in the following order: d, c, b, a

If all servers are running

When you run 'monit stop all' this is the stop order: a, b, c, d. If you run 'monit stop d' then a, b and c are also stopped because they depend on d and finally d is stopped.

If a does not run

When monit runs it will start a

If b does not run

When monit runs it will first stop a then start b and finally start a again.

If c does not run

When monit runs it will first stop a and b then start c and finally start b then a.

If d does not run

When monit runs it will first stop a, b and c then start d and finally start c, b then a.

If the control file contains a depend loop.

A depend loop is for example; a->b and b->a or a->b->c->a. When monit starts it will check for such loops and complain and exit if a loop was found. It will also exit with a complaint if a depend statement was used that does not point to a service in the control file.

The preferred way to set up monit is to write a .monitrc file in your home directory. When there is a conflict between the command-line arguments and the arguments in this file, the command-line arguments take precedence. To protect the security of your control file and passwords the control file must have permissions no more than 0700 (u=xrw,g=,o=); monit will complain and exit otherwise.

Comments begin with a '#' and extend through the end of the line. Otherwise the file consists of a series of service entries or global option statements in a free-format, token-oriented syntax.

There are three kinds of tokens: grammar keywords, numbers (i.e. decimal digit sequences) and strings. Strings can be either quoted or unquoted. A quoted string is bounded by double quotes and may contain whitespace (and quoted digits are treated as a string). An unquoted string is any whitespace-delimited token, containing characters and/or numbers.

On a semantic level, the control file consists of two types of entries:

1. Global set-statements

A global set-statement starts with the keyword set and the item to configure.

2. One or more service entry statements.

Each service entry consists of the keywords `check', followed by the service type. Each entry requires a <unique> descriptive name. This name is used by monit to refer to the service internally and in all interactions with the user.

Currently, five types of check statements are supported:

1. CHECK PROCESS <unique name> PIDFILE <path>

<path> is the absolute path to the program's pidfile. If the pidfile does not exist or does not contain the pid number of a running process, monit will call the entry's start method if defined, If monit runs in passive mode or the start methods is not defined, monit will just send alerts on errors.

2. CHECK FILE <unique name> PATH <path>

<path> is the absolute path to the file. If the file does not exist or disappeared, monit will call the entry's start method if defined, if <path> does not point to a regular file type (for instance a directory), monit will disable monitoring of this entry. If monit runs in passive mode or the start methods is not defined, monit will just send alerts on errors.

3. CHECK DEVICE <unique name> PATH <path>

<path> is the path to the device block special file, mount point, file or a directory which is part of a filesystem. It is recommended to use a block special file directly (for example /dev/hda1 on Linux or /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 on Solaris, etc.) If you use a mount point (for example /data), be careful, because if the device is unmounted the test will still be true because the mount point exist. If the device becomes unavailable, monit will call the entry's start method if defined. if <path> does not point to a device, monit will disable monitoring of this entry. If monit runs in passive mode or the start methods is not defined, monit will just send alerts on errors.

4. CHECK DIRECTORY <unique name> PATH <path>

<path> is the absolute path to the directory. If the directory does not exist or disappeared, monit will call the entry's start method if defined, if <path> does not point to a directory, monit will disable monitoring of this entry. If monit runs in passive mode or the start methods is not defined, monit will just send alerts on errors.

5. CHECK HOST <unique name> ADDRESS <host address>

The host address can be specified as a hostname string or as an ip-address string on a dotted decimal format. Such as, tildeslash.com or 64.87.72.95.

You can use noise keywords like 'if', `and', `with(in)', `has', `using', 'use', 'on(ly)', `usage' and `program(s)' anywhere in an entry to make it resemble English. They're ignored, but can make entries much easier to read at a glance. The punctuation characters ';' ',' and '=' are also ignored. Keywords are case insensitive.

 Here are the legal global keywords:

 Keyword         Function
 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 set daemon      Set a background poll interval in seconds.
 set init        Set monit to run from init. monit will not
                 transform itself into a daemon process.
 set logfile     Name of a file to dump error- and status-
                 messages to. If syslog is specified as the 
                 file, monit will utilize the syslog daemon
                 to log messages. This can optionally be 
                 followed by 'facility <facility>' where 
                 facility is 'log_local0' - 'log_local7' or 
                 'log_daemon'. If no facility is specified, 
                 LOG_USER is used.
 set mailserver  The mailserver used for sending alert
                 notifications. If the mailserver is not 
                 defined, monit will try to use 'localhost' 
                 as the smtp-server for sending mail. You 
                 can add more mail servers, if monit cannot
                 connect to the first server it will try the
                 next server and so on.
 set mail-format Set a global mail format for all alert
                 messages emitted by monit.
 set pidfile     Explicit set the location of the monit lock
                 file. E.g. set pidfile /var/run/xyzmonit.pid.
 set statefile   Explicit set the location of the file monit 
                 will write state data to. If not set, the
                 default is $HOME/.monit.state. 
 set httpd port  Activates monit http server at the given 
                 port number.
 ssl enable      Enables ssl support for the httpd server.
                 Requires the use of the pemfile statement.
 ssl disable     Disables ssl support for the httpd server.
                 It is equal to omitting any ssl statement.
 pemfile         Set the pemfile to be used with ssl.
 clientpemfile   Set the pemfile to be used when client
                 certificates should be checked by monit.
 address         If specified, the http server will only 
                 accept connect requests to this addresses
                 This statement is an optional part of the
                 set httpd statement.
 allow           Specifies a host or IP address allowed to
                 connect to the http server. Can also specify
                 a username and password allowed to connect
                 to the server. More than one allow statement
                 are allowed. This statement is also an 
                 optional part of the set httpd statement.
 read-only       Set the user defined in username:password
                 to read only. A read-only user cannot change
                 a service from the monit web interface.
 include         include a file or files matching the globstring

 Here are the legal service entry keywords:

 Keyword         Function
 ----------------------------------------------------------------
 check           Starts an entry and must be followed by the type
                 of monitored service {device|directory|file|host
                 process} and a descriptive name for the service.
 pidfile         Specify the  process pidfile. Every
                 process must create a pidfile with its
                 current process id. This statement should only
                 be used in a process service entry.
 path            Must be followed by a path to the block
                 special file for filesystem (device), regular
                 file, directory or a process's pidfile.
 group           Specify a groupname for a service entry.
 start           The program used to start the specified 
                 service. Full path is required. This 
                 statement is optional, but recommended.
 stop            The program used to stop the specified
                 service. Full path is required. This 
                 statement is optional, but recommended.
 pid and ppid    These keywords may be used as standalone
                 statements in a process service entry to
                 override the alert action for change of
                 process pid and ppid.
 uid and gid     These keywords are either 1) an optional part of
                 a start, stop or exec statement. They may be
                 used to specify a user id and a group id the
                 program (process) should switch to upon start.
                 This feature can only be used if the superuser
                 is running monit. 2) uid and gid may also be
                 used as standalone statements in a file service
                 entry to test a file's uid and gid attributes.
 host            The hostname or IP address to test the port
                 at. This keyword can only be used together
                 with a port statement or in the check host
                 statement.
 port            Specify a TCP/IP service port number which 
                 a process is listening on. This statement
                 is also optional. If this statement is not
                 prefixed with a host-statement, localhost is
                 used as the hostname to test the port at.
 type            Specifies the socket type monit should use when
                 testing a connection to a port. If the type
                 keyword is omitted, tcp is used. This keyword
                 must be followed by either tcp, udp or tcpssl.
 tcp             Specifies that monit should use a TCP 
                 socket type (stream) when testing a port.
 tcpssl          Specifies that monit should use a TCP socket
                 type (stream) and the secure socket layer (ssl)
                 when testing a port connection.
 udp             Specifies that monit should use a UDP socket
                 type (datagram) when testing a port.
 certmd5         The md5 sum of a certificate a ssl forged 
                 server has to deliver.
 proto(col)      This keyword specifies the type of service 
                 found at the port. monit knows at the moment 
                 how to speak HTTP, SMTP, FTP, POP, IMAP, MYSQL,
                 NNTP, SSH, DWP, LDAP2, LDAP3, RDATE, NTP3, DNS,
                 POSTFIX-POLICY, APACHE-STATUS and RSYNC.  You're
                 welcome to write new protocol test modules. If no
                 protocol is specified monit will use a default
                 test which in most cases are good enough.
 request         Specifies a server request and must come
                 after the protocol keyword mentioned above.
                  - for http it can contain an URL and an
                    optional query string.
                  - other protocols does not support this
                    statement yet
 send/expect     These keywords specify a generic protocol. 
                 Both require a string whether to be sent or
                 to be matched against (as extended regex if 
                 supported).  Send/expect can not be used together
                 with the proto(col) statement.
 unix(socket)    Specifies a Unix socket file and used like 
                 the port statement above to test a Unix 
                 domain network socket connection.
 URL             Specify an URL string which monit will use for
                 connection testing.
 content         Optional sub-statement for the URL statement.
                 Specifies that monit should test the content
                 returned by the server against a regular 
                 expression.
 timeout x sec.  Define a network port connection timeout. Must
                 be followed by a number in seconds and the 
                 keyword, seconds.
 timeout         Define a service timeout. Must be followed by
                 two digits. The first digit is max number of
                 restarts for the service. The second digit
                 is the cycle interval to test restarts. 
                 This statement is optional.
 alert           Specifies an email address for notification
                 if a service event occurs. Alert can also
                 be postfixed, to only send a message for
                 certain events. See the examples above. More
                 than one alert statement is allowed in an
                 entry. This statement is also optional.
 restart, stop   These keywords may be used as actions for 
 unmonitor,      various test statements. The exec statement is
 start and       special in that it requires a following string
 exec            specifying the program to be execute. You may
                 also specify an UID and GID for the exec 
                 statement. The program executed will then run
                 using the specified user id and group id.
 mail-format     Specifies a mail format for an alert message 
                 This statement is an optional part of the
                 alert statement.
 checksum        Specify that monit should compute and monitor a
                 file's md5/sha1 checksum. May only be used in a 
                 check file entry.
 expect          Specifies a md5/sha1 checksum string monit should
                 expect when testing the checksum. This statement
                 is an optional part of the checksum statement.
 timestamp       Specifies an expected timestamp for a file
                 or directory. More than one timestamp statement
                 are allowed. May only be used in a check file or
                 check directory entry.
 changed         Part of a timestamp statement and used as an
                 operator to simply test for a timestamp change.
 every           Validate this entry only at every n poll cycle.
                 Useful in daemon mode when the cycle is short
                 and a service takes some time to start.
 mode            Must be followed either by the keyword active,
                 passive or manual. If active, monit will restart
                 the service if it is not running (this is the
                 default behavior). If passive, monit will not
                 (re)start the service if it is not running - it
                 will only monitor and send alerts (resource
                 related restart and stop options are ignored
                 in this mode also). If manual, monit will enter
                 active mode only if a service was started under
                 monit's control otherwise the service isn't
                 monitored.
 cpu             Must be followed by a compare operator, a number 
                 with "%" and an action. This statement is used
                 to check the cpu usage in percent of a process
                 with its children over a number of cycles. If
                 the compare expression matches then the specified
                 action is executed.
 mem             The equivalent to the cpu token for memory of a 
                 process (w/o children!).  This token must be 
                 followed by a compare operator a number with 
                 unit {B|KB|MB|GB|%|byte|kilobyte|megabyte|
                 gigabyte|percent} and an action.
 loadavg         Must be followed by [1min,5min,15min] in (), a 
                 compare operator, a number and an action. This
                 statement is used to check the system load average
                 over a number of cycles. If the compare expression
                 matches then the specified action is executed.
 children        This is the number of child processes spawn by a
                 process. The syntax is the same as above.
 totalmem        The equivalent of mem, except totalmem is an
                 aggregation of memory, not only used by a
                 process but also by all its child
                 processes. The syntax is the same as above.
 space           Must be followed by a compare operator, a
                 number, unit {B|KB|MB|GB|%|byte|kilobyte|
                 megabyte|gigabyte|percent} and an action.
 inode(s)        Must be followed by a compare operator, integer
                 number, optionally by percent sign (if not, the
                 limit is absolute) and an action.
 perm(ission)    Must be followed by an octal number describing
                 the permissions.
 size            Must be followed by a compare operator, a
                 number, unit {B|KB|MB|GB|byte|kilobyte|
                 megabyte|gigabyte} and an action.
 depends (on)    Must be followed by the name of a service this
                 service depends on.

Here's the complete list of reserved keywords used by monit:

if, then, else, set, daemon, logfile, syslog, address, httpd, ssl, enable, disable, pemfile, allow, read-only, check, init, count, pidfile, statefile, group, start, stop, uid, gid, connection, port(n), unix(socket), type, proto(col), tcp, tcpssl, udp, alert, icmp, mail-format, restart, timeout, checksum, resource, expect, send, mailserver, every, mode, active, passive, manual, depends, host, default, http, ftp, smtp, pop, ntp3, nntp, imap, ssh, dwp, ldap2, ldap3, request, cpu, mem, totalmem, children, loadavg, timestamp, changed, second(s), minute(s), hour(s), day(s), space, inode, pid, ppid, perm(ission), process, file, directory, device, size, unmonitor, rdate, rsync, data, invalid, exec, nonexist, policy, reminder and failed

And here is a complete list of noise keywords ignored by monit:

is, as, are, on(ly), with(in), and, has, using, use, the, sum, program(s), than, for, usage, was.

Note: If the start or stop programs are shell scripts, then the script must begin with CW#! and the remainder of the first line must specify an interpreter for the program. E.g. CW#!/bin/sh

It's possible to write scripts directly into the start and stop entries by using a string of shell-commands. Like so:

 start="/bin/bash -c 'echo $$ > pidfile; exec program'"
 stop="/bin/bash -c 'kill -s SIGTERM `cat pidfile`'"

The simplest form is just the check statement. In this example we check to see if the server is running and log a message if not:

 check process resin with pidfile /usr/local/resin/srun.pid

To have monit start the server if it's not running, add a start statement:

 check process resin with pidfile /usr/local/resin/srun.pid
       start program = "/usr/local/resin/bin/srun.sh start"

Here's a more advanced example for monitoring an apache web-server listening on the default port number for HTTP and HTTPS. In this example monit will restart apache if it's not accepting connections at the port numbers. The method monit use for a process restart is to first execute the stop-program, wait for the process to stop and then execute the start-program. (If monit was unable to stop or start the service a failed alert message will be sent if you have requested alert messages to be sent).

 check process apache with pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
       if failed port 80 then restart
       if failed port 443 with timeout 15 seconds then restart

This example demonstrate how you can run a program as a specified user (uid) and with a specified group (gid). Many daemon programs will do the uid and gid switch by them self, but for those programs that does not (e.g. Java programs), monit's ability to start a program as a certain user can be very useful. In this example we start the Tomcat Java Servlet Engine as the standard nobody user and group. Please note that monit will only switch uid and gid for a program if the super-user is running monit, otherwise monit will simply ignore the request to change uid and gid.

 check process tomcat with pidfile /var/run/tomcat.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/tomcat start" 
             as uid nobody and gid nobody
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/tomcat stop"
             # You can also use id numbers instead and write:
             as uid 99 and with gid 99
       if failed port 8080 then alert

In this example we use udp for connection testing to check if the name-server is running and also use timeout and alert:

 check process named with pidfile /var/run/named.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/named start"
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/named stop"
       if failed port 53 use type udp protocol dns then restart
       if 3 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout
       alert bofh@norid.no

The following example illustrate how to check if the service 'sophie' is answering connections on its Unix domain socket:

 check process sophie with pidfile /var/run/sophie.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/sophie start"
       stop  program = "/etc/init.d/sophie stop"
       if failed unix /var/run/sophie then restart

In this example we check an apache web-server running on localhost that answers for several IP-based virtual hosts or vhosts, hence the host statement before port:

 check process apache with pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid
       start "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
       stop  "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
       if failed host www.sol.no port 80 then alert
       if failed host shop.sol.no port 443 then alert
       if failed host chat.sol.no port 80 then alert
       if failed host www.tildeslash.com port 80 then alert

To make sure that monit is communicating with a http server a protocol test can be added:

 check process apache with pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid
       start "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
       stop  "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
       if failed host www.sol.no port 80 
          protocol HTTP
          then alert

This example shows a different way to check a webserver using the send/expect mechanism:

 check process apache with pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid
       start "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
       stop  "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
       if failed host www.sol.no port 80 
          send "GET / HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: www.sol.no\r\n\r\n"
          expect "HTTP/[0-9\.]{3} 200 .*\r\n"
          then alert

To make sure that Apache is logging successfully (i.e. no more than 60 percent of child servers are logging), use its mod_status page at www.sol.no/server-status with this special protocol test:

 check process apache with pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid
       start "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
       stop  "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
       if failed host www.sol.no port 80
       protocol apache-status loglimit > 60% then restart

This configuration can be used to alert you if 25 percent or more of Apache child processes are stuck performing DNS lookups:

 check process apache with pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid
       start "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
       stop  "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
       if failed host www.sol.no port 80
       protocol apache-status dnslimit > 25% then alert

Here we use an icmp ping test to check if a remote host is up and if not send an alert:

 check host www.tildeslash.com with address www.tildeslash.com
       if failed icmp type echo count 5 with timeout 15 seconds
          then alert
       alert foo@bar.org

In the following example we ask monit to compute and verify the checksum for the underlying apache binary used by the start and stop programs. If the the checksum test should fail, monitoring will be disabled to prevent possibly starting a compromised binary:

 check process apache with pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
       if failed host www.tildeslash.com port 80 then restart
       depends on apache_bin

 check file apache_bin with path /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
       if failed checksum then unmonitor
       alert foo@bar.baz

In this example we ask monit to test the checksum for a document on a remote server. If the checksum was changed we send an alert:

 check host tildeslash with address www.tildeslash.com
       if failed port 80 protocol http 
          and request "/monit/dist/monit-4.0.tar.gz"
              with checksum f9d26b8393736b5dfad837bb13780786
       then alert
       alert hauk@tildeslash.com with mail-format { subject: Aaaalarm! }

Some servers are slow starters, like for example Java based Application Servers. So if we want to keep the poll-cycle low (i.e. < 60 seconds) but allow some services to take its time to start, the every statement is handy:

 check process dynamo with pidfile /etc/dynamo.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/dynamo start"
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/dynamo stop"
       if failed port 8840 then alert
       every 2 cycles

Here is an example where we group together two database entries so you can manage them together, e.g.; 'monit -g database start all'. The mode statement is also illustrated in the first entry and have the effect that monit will not try to (re)start this service if it is not running:

 check process sybase with pidfile /var/run/sybase.pid
       start = "/etc/init.d/sybase start"
       stop  = "/etc/init.d/sybase stop"
       mode passive
       group database

 check process oracle with pidfile /var/run/oracle.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/oracle start"
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/oracle stop"
       mode active # Not necessary really, since it's the default
       if failed port 9001 then restart
       alert bofh@foo.bar
       group database

Here is an example to show the usage of the resource checks. It will send an alert when the CPU usage of the http daemon and its child processes raises beyond 60% for over two cycles. Apache is restarted if the CPU usage is over 80% for five cycles or the memory usage over 100Mb for five cycles or if the machines load average is more than 10 for 8 cycles:

 check process apache with pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
       if cpu > 60% for 2 cycles then alert
       if cpu > 80% for 5 cycles then restart
       if mem > 100 MB for 5 cycles then stop
       if loadavg(5) greater than 10.0 for 8 cycles then stop

This examples demonstrate the timestamp statement with exec and how you may restart apache if its configuration file was changed.

 check file httpd.conf with path /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf
       if changed timestamp
          then exec "/etc/init.d/httpd graceful"

In this example we demonstrate usage of the extended alert statement and a file check dependency:

 check process apache with pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid
      start = "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
      stop  = "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
      if failed host www.tildeslash.com  port 80 then restart
      alert admin@bar on {nonexist, timeout} 
        with mail-format { 
              from:     bofh@$HOST
              subject:  apache $EVENT - $ACTION
              message:  This event occurred on $HOST at $DATE. 
              Your faithful employee,
              monit
      }
      if 3 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout
      depend httpd_bin
      group apache

 check file httpd_bin with path /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
       if failed checksum 
          and expect 8f7f419955cefa0b33a2ba316cba3659
              then unmonitor
       if failed permission 755 then unmonitor
       if failed uid root then unmonitor
       if failed gid root then unmonitor
       if changed timestamp then alert
       alert security@bar on {checksum, timestamp, 
                              permission, uid, gid}
             with mail-format {subject: Alaaarrm! on $HOST}
       group apache

In this example, we demonstrate usage of the depend statement. In this case, we want to start oracle and apache. However, we've set up apache to use oracle as a back end, and if oracle is restarted, apache must be restarted as well.

 check process apache with pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid
       start = "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
       stop  = "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
       depends on oracle

 check process oracle with pidfile /var/run/oracle.pid
       start = "/etc/init.d/oracle start"
       stop  = "/etc/init.d/oracle stop"
       if failed port 9001 then restart

Next, we have 2 services, oracle-import and oracle-export that need to be restarted if oracle is restarted, but are independent of each other.

 check process oracle with pidfile /var/run/oracle.pid
       start = "/etc/init.d/oracle start"
       stop  = "/etc/init.d/oracle stop"
       if failed port 9001 then restart

 check process oracle-import 
      with pidfile /var/run/oracle-import.pid
       start = "/etc/init.d/oracle-import start"
       stop  = "/etc/init.d/oracle-import stop"
       depends on oracle

 check process oracle-export 
      with pidfile /var/run/oracle-export.pid
       start = "/etc/init.d/oracle-export start"
       stop  = "/etc/init.d/oracle-export stop"
       depends on oracle

Finally an example with all statements:

 check process apache with pidfile /var/run/httpd.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/httpd start"
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/httpd stop"
       if 3 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout
       if failed host www.sol.no  port 80 protocol http
          and use the request "/login.cgi"
              then alert
       if failed host shop.sol.no port 443 type tcpssl 
          protocol http and with timeout 15 seconds 
              then restart
       if cpu is greater than 60% for 2 cycles then alert
       if cpu > 80% for 5 cycles then restart
       if totalmem > 100 MB then stop
       if children > 200 then alert
       alert bofh@bar with mail-format {from: monit@foo.bar.no}
       every 2 cycles
       mode active
       depends on weblogic
       depends on httpd.pid
       depends on httpd.conf
       depends on httpd_bin
       depends on datafs
       group server

 check file httpd.pid with path /usr/local/apache/logs/httpd.pid
       group server
       if timestamp > 7 days then restart
       every 2 cycles
       alert bofh@bar with mail-format {from: monit@foo.bar.no}
       depends on datafs

 check file httpd.conf with path /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf
       group server
       if timestamp was changed 
          then exec "/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl graceful"
       every 2 cycles
       alert bofh@bar with mail-format {from: monit@foo.bar.no}
       depends on datafs

 check file httpd_bin with path /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd
       group server
       if failed checksum and expect the sum
          8f7f419955cefa0b33a2ba316cba3659 then unmonitor
       if failed permission 755 then unmonitor
       if failed uid root then unmonitor
       if failed gid root then unmonitor
       if changed size then alert
       if changed timestamp then alert
       every 2 cycles
       alert bofh@bar with mail-format {from: monit@foo.bar.no}
       alert foo@bar on { checksum, size, timestamp, uid, gid } 
       depends on datafs

 check device datafs with path /dev/sdb1
       group server
       start program  = "/bin/mount /data"
       stop program  =  "/bin/umount /data"
       if failed permission 660 then unmonitor
       if failed uid root then unmonitor
       if failed gid disk then unmonitor
       if space usage > 80 % then alert
       if space usage > 94 % then stop
       if inode usage > 80 % then alert
       if inode usage > 94 % then stop
       alert root@localhost

 check host ftp.redhat.com with address ftp.redhat.com
       if failed icmp type echo with timeout 15 seconds
          then alert 
       if failed port 21 protocol ftp
          then exec "/usr/X11R6/bin/xmessage -display
                     :0 ftp connection failed"
       alert foo@bar.com

 check host www.gnu.org with address www.gnu.org
       if failed port 80 protocol http 
          and request "/pub/gnu/bash/bash-2.05b.tar.gz"
              with checksum 8f7f419955cefa0b33a2ba316cba3659
       then alert
       alert rms@gnu.org with mail-format {
            subject: The gnu server may be hacked again! }

Note; only the check type, pidfile/path/address statements are mandatory, the other statements are optional and the order of the optional statements is not important.

You can download heartbeat from http://www.linux-ha.org/download/. It might be useful to have a look at The Heartbeat Getting Started Guide at: http://www.linux-ha.org/GettingStarted.html

Starting up a Node

This is the normal start sequence for a cluster-node. With this sequence, there should be no error-case, which is not handled either by heartbeat or by monit. For example, if monit dies, initd restarts it. If heartbeat dies, monit restarts it. If the node dies, the heartbeat instance on the other node detects it and restart the services there.

1. initd starts monit with group local

2. monit starts heartbeat in local group

3. heartbeat requests monit to start the node group

4. monit starts the node group

Monit: BI/etc/monit/monitrc

This example describes a cluster with 2 nodes. Services running on Node 1 are in the group node1 and Node 2 services are in the node2 group.

The local group entries are mode active, the node group entries are mode manual and controlled by heartbeat.

 #
 # local services on both hosts
 #

 check process heartbeat with pidfile /var/run/heartbeat.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/heartbeat start"
       stop  program = "/etc/init.d/heartbeat start"
       mode  active
       alert foo@bar
       group local

 check process postfix with pidfile /var/spool/postfix/pid/master.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/postfix start"
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/postfix stop"
       mode  active
       alert foo@bar
       group local

 #
 # node1 services
 #

 check process apache with pidfile /var/apache/logs/httpd.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/apache start"
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/apache stop"
       depends named
       alert foo@bar
       mode  manual
       group node1

 check process named with pidfile /var/tmp/named.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/named start"
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/named stop"
       alert foo@bar
       mode  manual
       group node1

 #
 # node2 services
 #

 check process named-slave with pidfile /var/tmp/named-slave.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/named-slave start"
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/named-slave stop"
       mode  manual
       alert foo@bar
       group node2

 check process squid with pidfile /var/squid/logs/squid.pid
       start program = "/etc/init.d/squid start"
       stop program  = "/etc/init.d/squid stop"
       depends named-slave
       alert foo@bar
       mode  manual
       group node2

initd: BI/etc/inittab

Monit is started on both nodes with initd. You will need to add an entry in /etc/inittab to start monit with the same local group heartbeat is member of.

 #/etc/inittab
 mo:2345:respawn:/usr/sbin/monit -d 10 -c /etc/monit/monitrc -g local

heartbeat: BI/etc/ha.d/haresources

When heartbeat starts, heartbeat looks up the node entry and start the script /etc/init.d/monit-node1 or /etc/init.d/monit-node2. The script calls monit to start the specific group per node.

 # /etc/ha.d/haresources
 node1 IPaddr::172.16.100.1  monit-node1
 node2 IPaddr::172.16.100.2  monit-node2

BI/etc/init.d/monit-node1

 #!/bin/bash
 #
 # sample script for starting/stopping all services on node1
 #
 prog="/usr/sbin/monit -g node1"
 start()
 {
       echo -n $"Starting $prog:"
       $prog start all
       echo
 }

 stop()
 {
       echo -n $"Stopping $prog:"
       $prog stop all
       echo
 }

 case "$1" in
       start)
            start;;
       stop)
            stop;;
       *)
            echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop}"
            RETVAL=1
 esac
 exit $RETVAL

As mentioned elsewhere, monit save its state to a state file. If the monit process should die, upon restart monit will read its last known state from this file. This can be a problem if monit is used in a cluster, as illustrate in this scenario:

1

The active node fails, the second takes over

2

After a reboot, the failed node comes back, monit read its state file and start all the services (even manual ones) as they were running before the failure. This is a problem because services will now run on both nodes.

The solution to this problem is to remove the monit.state file in a rc-script called at boot time and before monit is started.

~/.monitrc Default run control file

/etc/monit/monitrc If the control file is not found in the default location and /etc/monit contains a monitrc file, this file will be used instead.

./monitrc If the control file is not found in either of the previous two locations, and the current working directory contains a monitrc file, this file is used instead.

~/.monitrc.pid Lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (non-root mode).

/var/run/monit.pid Lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, Linux systems).

/etc/monit.pid Lock file to help prevent concurrent runs (root mode, systems without /var/run).

~/.monit.state monit save its state to this file and utilize information found in this file to recover from a crash. This is a binary file and its content is only of interest to monit. You may set the location of this file in the monit control file or by using the -s switch when monit is started.

No environment variables are used by monit. However, when monit execute a script or a program monit will set several environment variables which can be utilized by the executable. The following and only the following environment variables are available:

MONIT_EVENT

The event that occurred on the service

MONIT_SERVICE

The name of the service (from monitrc) on which the event occurred.

MONIT_DATE

The time and date (rfc 822 style) the event occurred

MONIT_HOST

The host the event occurred on

The following environment variables are only available for process service entries:

MONIT_PROCESS_PID

The process pid. This may be 0 if the process was (re)started,

MONIT_PROCESS_MEMORY

Process memory. This may be 0 if the process was (re)started,

MONIT_PROCESS_CHILDREN

Process children. This may be 0 if the process was (re)started,

MONIT_PROCESS_CPU_PERCENT

Process cpu%. This may be 0 if the process was (re)started,

In addition the following spartan PATH environment variable is available:

PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin

Scripts or programs that depends on other environment variables or on a more verbose PATH must provide means to set these variables by them self.

If a monit daemon is running, SIGUSR1 wakes it up from its sleep phase and forces a poll of all services. SIGTERM and SIGINT will gracefully terminate a monit daemon. The SIGTERM signal is sent to a monit daemon if monit is started with the quit action argument.

Sending a SIGHUP signal to a running monit daemon will force the daemon to reinitialize itself, specifically it will reread configuration, close and reopen log files.

Running monit in foreground while a background monit daemon is running will wake up the daemon.

This is a very silent program. Use the -v switch if you want to see what monit is doing, and tail -f the logfile. Optionally for testing purposes; you can start monit with the -Iv switch. Monit will then print debug information to the console, to stop monit in this mode, simply press CTRL^C (i.e. SIGINT) in the same console.

The syntax (and parser) of the control file is inspired by Eric S. Raymond et al. excellent fetchmail program. Some portions of this man page does also receive inspiration from the same authors.

Jan-Henrik Haukeland <hauk@tildeslash.com>, Martin Pala <martinp@tildeslash.com>, Christian Hopp <chopp@iei.tu-clausthal.de>, Rory Toma <rory@digeo.com>

See also http://www.tildeslash.com/monit/who.html +.PP +Edited by Stefan Alfredsson <alfs@debian.org> for the Debian project.

Copyright (C) 2000-2005 by the monit project group. All Rights Reserved. This product is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT any warranty; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS for a particular purpose.

GNU text utilities; md5sum(1); sha1sum(1); openssl(1); glob(7); regex(7)