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dashy/docs/management.md

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Management

Providing Assets

Although not essential, you will most likely want to provide several assets to Dashy. All web assets can be found in the /public directory.

  • ./public/conf.yml - As mentioned, this is your main application config file
  • ./public/item-icons - If you're using your own icons, you can choose to store them locally for better load time, and this is the directory to put them in. You can also use sub-folders here to keep things organized. You then reference these assets relative this the direcroties path, for example: to use ./public/item-icons/networking/netdata.png as an icon for one of your links, you would set icon: networking/netdata.png
  • Also within ./public you'll find standard website assets, including favicon.ico, manifest.json, robots.txt, etc. There's no need to modify these, but you can do so if you wish.

Basic Commands

Now that you've got Dashy running, there are a few commands that you need to know.

The following commands are defined in the package.json file, and are run with yarn. If you prefer, you can use NPM, just replace instances of yarn with npm run. If you are using Docker, then you will need to precede each command with docker exec -it [container-id], where container ID can be found by running docker ps. For example docker exec -it 26c156c467b4 yarn build.

  • yarn build - In the interest of speed, the application is pre-compiled, this means that the config file is read during build-time, and therefore the app needs to rebuilt for any new changes to take effect. Luckily this is very straight forward. Just run yarn build or docker exec -it [container-id] yarn build
  • yarn validate-config - If you have quite a long configuration file, you may wish to check that it's all good to go, before deploying the app. This can be done with yarn validate-config or docker exec -it [container-id] yarn validate-config. Your config file needs to be in /public/conf.yml (or within your Docker container at /app/public/conf.yml). This will first check that your YAML is valid, and then validates it against Dashy's schema.
  • yarn health-check - Checks that the application is up and running on it's specified port, and outputs current status and response times. Useful for integrating into your monitoring service, if you need to maintain high system availability
  • yarn build-watch - If you find yourself making frequent changes to your configuration, and do not want to have to keep manually rebuilding, then this option is for you. It will watch for changes to any files within the projects root, and then trigger a rebuild. Note that if you are developing new features, then yarn dev would be more appropriate, as it's significantly faster at recompiling (under 1 second), and has hot reloading, linting and testing integrated
  • yarn build-and-start - Builds the app, runs checks and starts the production server. Commands are run in parallel, and so is faster than running them in independently
  • yarn pm2-start - Starts the Node server using PM2, a process manager for Node.js applications, that helps them stay alive. PM2 has some built-in basic monitoring features, and an optional management solution. If you are running the app on bare metal, it is recommended to use this start command

Healthchecks

Healthchecks are configured to periodically check that Dashy is up and running correctly on the specified port. By default, the health script is called every 5 minutes, but this can be modified with the --health-interval option. You can check the current container health with: docker inspect --format "{{json .State.Health }}" [container-id], and a summary of health status will show up under docker ps. You can also manually request the current application status by running docker exec -it [container-id] yarn health-check. You can disable healthchecks altogether by adding the --no-healthcheck flag to your Docker run command.

To restart unhealthy containers automatically, check out Autoheal. This image watches for unhealthy containers, and automatically triggers a restart. This is a stand in for Docker's --exit-on-unhealthy that was proposed, but not merged.

Logs and Performance

Container Logs

You can view logs for a given Docker container with docker logs [container-id], add the --follow flag to stream the logs. For more info, see the Logging Documentation. There's also Dozzle, a useful tool, that provides a web interface where you can stream and query logs from all your running containers from a single web app.

Container Performance

You can check the resource usage for your running Docker containers with docker stats or docker stats [container-id]. For more info, see the Stats Documentation. There's also cAdvisor, a useful web app for viewing and analyzing resource usage and performance of all your running containers.

Management Apps

You can also view logs, resource usage and other info as well as manage your entire Docker workflow in third-party Docker management apps. For example Portainer an all-in-one open source management web UI for Docker and Kubernetes, or LazyDocker a terminal UI for Docker container management and monitoring.

Advanced Logging and Monitoring

Docker supports using Prometheus to collect logs, which can then be visualized using a platform like Grafana. For more info, see this guide. If you need to route your logs to a remote syslog, then consider using logspout. For enterprise-grade instances, there are managed services, that make monitoring container logs and metrics very easy, such as Sematext with Logagent.

Auto-Starting at System Boot

You can use Docker's restart policies to instruct the container to start after a system reboot, or restart after a crash. Just add the --restart=always flag to your Docker compose script or Docker run command. For more information, see the docs on Starting Containers Automatically.

For Podman, you can use systemd to create a service that launches your container, the docs explains things further. A similar approach can be used with Docker, if you need to start containers after a reboot, but before any user interaction.

To restart the container after something within it has crashed, consider using docker-autoheal by @willfarrell, a service that monitors and restarts unhealthy containers. For more info, see the Healthchecks section above.

Securing

SSL

Enabling HTTPS with an SSL certificate is recommended if you hare hosting Dashy anywhere other than your home. This will ensure that all traffic is encrypted in transit.

Let's Encrypt is a global Certificate Authority, providing free SSL/TLS Domain Validation certificates in order to enable secure HTTPS access to your website. They have good browser/ OS compatibility with their ISRG X1 and DST CA X3 root certificates, support Wildcard issuance done via ACMEv2 using the DNS-01 and have Multi-Perspective Validation. Let's Encrypt provide CertBot an easy app for generating and setting up an SSL certificate

ZeroSSL is another popular certificate issuer, they are free for personal use, and also provide easy-to-use tools for getting things setup.

If you're hosting Dashy behind Cloudflare, then they offer free and easy SSL.

If you're not so comfortable on the command line, then you can use a tool like SSL For Free to generate your Let's Encrypt or ZeroSSL certificate, and support shared hosting servers. They also provide step-by-step tutorials on setting up your certificate on most common platforms. If you are using shared hosting, you may find this tutorial helpful.

Authentication

Dashy has basic authentication built in, however at present this is handled on the front-end, and so where security is critical, it is recommended to use an alternative method. See here for options regarding securing Dashy.

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Updating

Dashy is under active development, so to take advantage of the latest features, you may need to update your instance every now and again.

Updating Docker Container

  1. Pull latest image: docker pull lissy93/dashy:latest
  2. Kill off existing container
    • Find container ID: docker ps
    • Stop container: docker stop [container_id]
    • Remove container: docker rm [container_id]
  3. Spin up new container: docker run [params] lissy93/dashy

Automatic Docker Updates

You can automate the above process using Watchtower. Watchtower will watch for new versions of a given image on Docker Hub, pull down your new image, gracefully shut down your existing container and restart it with the same options that were used when it was deployed initially.

To get started, spin up the watchtower container:

docker run -d \
  --name watchtower \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  containrrr/watchtower

For more information, see the Watchtower Docs

Updating Dashy from Source

  1. Navigate into directory: cd ./dashy
  2. Stop your current instance
  3. Pull latest code: git pull origin master
  4. Re-build: yarn build
  5. Start: yarn start

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Web Server Configuration

The following section only applies if you are not using Docker, and would like to use your own web server

Dashy ships with a pre-configured Node.js server, in server.js which serves up the contents of the ./dist directory on a given port. You can start the server by running node server. Note that the app must have been build (run yarn build), and you need Node.js installed.

If you wish to run Dashy from a sub page (e.g. example.com/dashy), then just set the BASE_URL environmental variable to that page name (in this example, /dashy), before building the app, and the path to all assets will then resolve to the new path, instead of ./.

However, since Dashy is just a static web application, it can be served with whatever server you like. The following section outlines how you can configure a web server.

Note, that if you choose not to use server.js to serve up the app, you will loose access to the following features:

  • Loading page, while the app is building
  • Writing config file to disk from the UI
  • Website status indicators, and ping checks

NGINX

Create a new file in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/dashy

server {
	listen 80;
	listen [::]:80;

	root /var/www/dashy/html;
	index index.html;

	server_name your-domain.com www.your-domain.com;

	location / {
		try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
	}
}

Then upload the build contents of Dashy's dist directory to that location. For example: scp -r ./dist/* [username]@[server_ip]:/var/www/dashy/html

Apache

Copy Dashy's dist folder to your apache server, sudo cp -r ./dashy/dist /var/www/html/dashy.

In your Apache config, /etc/apche2/apache2.conf add:

<Directory /var/www/html>
	Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
	AllowOverride All
	Require all granted
</Directory>

Add a .htaccess file within /var/www/html/dashy/.htaccess, and add:

Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.html [QSA,L]

Then restart Apache, with sudo systemctl restart apache2

cPanel

  1. Login to your WHM
  2. Open 'Feature Manager' on the left sidebar
  3. Under 'Manage feature list', click 'Edit'
  4. Find 'Application manager' in the list, enable it and hit 'Save'
  5. Log into your users cPanel account, and under 'Software' find 'Application Manager'
  6. Click 'Register Application', fill in the form using the path that Dashy is located, and choose a domain, and hit 'Save'
  7. The application should now show up in the list, click 'Ensure dependencies', and move the toggle switch to 'Enabled'
  8. If you need to change the port, click 'Add environmental variable', give it the name 'PORT', choose a port number and press 'Save'.
  9. Dashy should now be running at your selected path an on a given port

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Authentication

Dashy has built-in authentication and login functionality. However, since this is handled on the client-side, if you are using Dashy in security-critical situations, it is recommended to use an alternate method for authentication, such as Authelia, a VPN or web server and firewall rules. For more info, see Authentication Docs.

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