GANDALF (Global Advanced Network Detection And Link Facilitator)

Because it shall not let problems pass!

Network monitoring dashboard for the LotusGuild Proxmox cluster. Deployed on LXC 157 (monitor-02 / 10.10.10.9), reachable at gandalf.lotusguild.org.

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Architecture

Gandalf is two processes that share a MariaDB database:

Process	Service	Role
app.py	gandalf.service	Flask web dashboard (gunicorn, port 8000)
monitor.py	gandalf-monitor.service	Background polling daemon

[Prometheus :9090] ──▶
                        monitor.py ──▶ MariaDB ◀── app.py ──▶ nginx ──▶ Authelia ──▶ Browser
[UniFi Controller] ──▶

Data Sources

Source	What it monitors
Prometheus (10.10.10.48:9090)	Physical NIC link state (node_network_up) for 6 Proxmox hosts
UniFi API (https://10.10.10.1)	Switch, AP, and gateway device status
Ping	pbs (10.10.10.3) — no node_exporter

Monitored Hosts (Prometheus / node_exporter)

Host	Instance
large1	10.10.10.2:9100
compute-storage-01	10.10.10.4:9100
micro1	10.10.10.8:9100
monitor-02	10.10.10.9:9100
compute-storage-gpu-01	10.10.10.10:9100
storage-01	10.10.10.11:9100

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Features

• Interface monitoring – tracks link state for all physical NICs via Prometheus
• UniFi device monitoring – detects offline switches, APs, and gateways
• Ping reachability – covers hosts without node_exporter
• Cluster-wide detection – creates a separate P1 ticket when 3+ hosts have simultaneous interface failures (likely a switch failure)
• Smart baseline tracking – interfaces that are down on first observation (unused ports) are never alerted on; only regressions from UP→DOWN trigger tickets
• Ticket creation – integrates with Tinker Tickets (t.lotusguild.org) with 24-hour deduplication
• Alert suppression – manual toggle or timed windows (30min / 1hr / 4hr / 8hr / manual)
• Authelia SSO – restricted to admin group via forward-auth headers

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Alert Logic

Ticket Triggers

Condition	Priority
UniFi device offline (2+ consecutive checks)	P2 High
Proxmox host NIC link-down regression (2+ consecutive checks)	P2 High
Host unreachable via ping (2+ consecutive checks)	P2 High
3+ hosts simultaneously reporting interface failures	P1 Critical

Suppression Targets

Type	Suppresses
host	All interface alerts for a named host
interface	A specific NIC on a specific host
unifi_device	A specific UniFi device
all	Everything (global maintenance mode)

Suppressions can be manual (persist until removed) or timed (auto-expire).

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Configuration

config.json – shared by both processes:

Key	Description
unifi.api_key	UniFi API key from controller
prometheus.url	Prometheus base URL
database.*	MariaDB credentials
ticket_api.api_key	Tinker Tickets Bearer token
monitor.poll_interval	Seconds between checks (default: 120)
monitor.failure_threshold	Consecutive failures before ticketing (default: 2)
monitor.cluster_threshold	Hosts with failures to trigger cluster alert (default: 3)
monitor.ping_hosts	Hosts checked via ping (no node_exporter)
hosts	Maps Prometheus instance labels to hostnames

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Deployment (LXC 157)

1. Database (MariaDB LXC 149 at 10.10.10.50)

CREATE DATABASE gandalf CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'gandalf'@'10.10.10.61' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON gandalf.* TO 'gandalf'@'10.10.10.61';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Then import the schema:

mysql -h 10.10.10.50 -u gandalf -p gandalf < schema.sql

2. LXC 157 – Install dependencies

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

3. Deploy files

cp app.py db.py monitor.py config.json templates/ static/ /var/www/html/prod/

4. Configure secrets in config.json

• database.password – set the gandalf DB password
• ticket_api.api_key – copy from tinker tickets admin panel

5. Install the monitor service

cp gandalf-monitor.service /etc/systemd/system/
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable gandalf-monitor
systemctl start gandalf-monitor

Update existing gandalf.service to use a single worker:

ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 -m gunicorn --workers 1 --bind 127.0.0.1:8000 app:app

6. Authelia rule

Add to /etc/authelia/configuration.yml access_control rules:

- domain: gandalf.lotusguild.org
  policy: one_factor
  subject:
    - group:admin

Reload Authelia: systemctl restart authelia

7. NPM proxy host

• Domain: gandalf.lotusguild.org
• Forward to: http://10.10.10.61:80 (nginx on LXC 157)
• Enable Authelia forward auth
• WebSockets: not required

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Service Management

# Monitor daemon
systemctl status gandalf-monitor
journalctl -u gandalf-monitor -f

# Web server
systemctl status gandalf
journalctl -u gandalf -f

# Restart both after config/code changes
systemctl restart gandalf-monitor gandalf

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Troubleshooting

Monitor not creating tickets

• Check config.json → ticket_api.api_key is set
• Check journalctl -u gandalf-monitor for errors

Baseline re-initializing on every restart

• interface_baseline is stored in the monitor_state DB table; it persists across restarts

Interface always showing as "initial_down"

• That interface was down on the first poll after the monitor started
• It will begin tracking once it comes up; or manually update the baseline in DB if needed

Prometheus data missing for a host

• Verify node_exporter is running: systemctl status prometheus-node-exporter
• Check Prometheus targets: http://10.10.10.48:9090/targets