¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

This site is now monitored via self-hosted uptime infrastructure.

How did I do it?

Software: UptimeKuma. Open-source, self-hosted, simple & easy, has a docker image for deployment, sensible defaults, lots of customization possibilities. Modern, solid, well-maintained, popular (80k+ stars on GitHub). A no-brainer choice, really.

I deployed it via Docker on Alpine Linux.

Install docker and docker-compose:

% doas apk add docker docker-compose

Update the docker storage driver from the overlay2 default as it was failing for some reason:

% doasedit /etc/docker/daemon.json
{
	  "storage-driver": "vfs"
}

Start docker, now and on startup:

% doas service docker start
% doas rc-update add docker

…equivalently to systemctl enable --now docker.

Create a docker-compose.yml file for the service:

services:
  uptime-kuma:
    image: louislam/uptime-kuma:latest
    container_name: uptime-kuma
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:3001:3001"
    volumes:
      - /opt/uptime-kuma:/app/data

…ensure to bind it to localhost only (127.0.0.1).

Start it:

% docker-compose up -d

-d to start it in the background.

From here we access the service and configure it (out of scope of this post):

• create an admin user, set a secure password
• enable 2FA (TOTP)
• add the first monitor (https://perrotta.dev)

To access the service securely for the first time, there are various possibilities:

• expose it under a reverse proxy with HTTP basic auth
• employ a VPN (e.g. Tailscale, Wireguard)
• use SSH port forwarding from your VPS to your laptop

…just do not expose the service to 0.0.0.0 without credentials.

Next, expose the service via a user-friendly URL, with the creation of a DNS record. As you can see, I chose uptime.perrotta.dev.

Configure your reverse proxy (Caddy in this case):

uptime.perrotta.dev {
	log {
		output file /var/log/caddy/uptime.log
	}

	reverse_proxy * {
		to 127.0.0.1:3001
		header_up Host {host}
	}
}

Then:

% doas service caddy reload

And now sit back and enjoy free uptime monitoring!