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Container Monitoring

Zero-config auto-discovery for Docker and Kubernetes. Every container is tracked the moment it starts.

How It Works

maintenant connects to your container runtime (Docker socket or Kubernetes API) and watches for container lifecycle events in real time. There is nothing to configure — every container is discovered automatically.

When a new container starts, maintenant immediately begins tracking:

  • State changes — running, stopped, restarting, paused, exited (with exit codes)
  • Health checks — Docker HEALTHCHECK status (healthy, unhealthy, starting)
  • Restart loops — Detection and alerting when a container is stuck restarting
  • Uptime — How long each container has been running

All state transitions are persisted in the database and pushed to the browser via SSE in real time.

Auto-Discovery

maintenant connects to the Docker daemon via the socket (/var/run/docker.sock). Mount it as read-only:

volumes:
  - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro

Every running container is discovered automatically. New containers are picked up the moment they start. maintenant never modifies your containers — it is strictly read-only.

maintenant uses the in-cluster Kubernetes API with a read-only ServiceAccount. It watches:

  • Pods — Individual container states, logs, events
  • Deployments — Rollout status, replica counts
  • StatefulSets — Ordered pod management
  • DaemonSets — Node-level workloads

See the Kubernetes Guide for RBAC setup.

Grouping

Containers are automatically grouped for easy navigation.

  • Compose projects — Containers from the same docker-compose.yml are grouped by project name.
  • Custom groups — Override with the maintenant.group label:
labels:
  maintenant.group: "backend"

Workloads are grouped by type: Deployments, DaemonSets, StatefulSets. Pods within each workload are displayed together.

Health Checks

maintenant reads Docker HEALTHCHECK results automatically. No configuration needed — if your container defines a health check, maintenant tracks it.

Health states:

State Description
healthy Health check passing
unhealthy Health check failing
starting Container just started, health check not yet run
none No health check defined

When a container transitions to unhealthy, maintenant can trigger an alert through the Alert Engine.

Restart Loop Detection

maintenant detects containers stuck in restart loops. When a container exceeds the configured restart threshold within a time window, an alert is fired.

Configure the threshold per container:

labels:
  maintenant.alert.restart_threshold: "5"  # Alert after 5 restarts

Log Streaming

maintenant provides real-time log streaming with stdout/stderr demultiplexing. Logs are streamed directly from the container runtime — they are not stored in maintenant's database.

Access logs via the API:

  • GET /api/v1/containers/{id}/logs — Fetch recent logs
  • GET /api/v1/containers/{id}/logs/stream — SSE stream of live logs

Excluding Containers

To exclude a container from maintenant monitoring:

labels:
  maintenant.ignore: "true"

This is useful for infrastructure containers (reverse proxies, sidecars) that add noise to your dashboard.