How to monitor & automatically restart MySQL, Nginx, Apache etc. on your server

Thank to: https://superdevresources.com/

Managing server is not an easy job, specially if you have multiple softwares like MySQL, Nginx or Apache running on your servers. Downtime happens and running softwares get killed due to many reasons. In this post, I will share how I use Monit to constantly monitor programs running on my servers and automatically get them restarted when they go down. Monit also enables me to remotely watch the system status.

About Monit

Monit is a small Open Source utility for managing and monitoring Unix systems. Monit conducts automatic maintenance and repair and can execute actions in error situations.

Additionally, Monit has a built-in lightweight HTTP(S) interface you can use to browse the Monit server and check the status of all monitored services. From the web-interface you can start, stop and restart processes and disable or enable monitoring of services.

Installing and Configuring Monit on Ubuntu

We can install monit by simply running the following command

sudo apt-get install monit

It is very easy to configure Monit. I will show the very basic configurations required to enable the Monit Web interface and to monitor programs like MySQL, Nginx and Apache. Run the following command to open Monit configuration file in Vim editor:

sudo vim /etc/monit/monitrc

Enabling Web Interface

The first thing we will do is enable the Web Interface for Monit, so that we can access it from anywhere. To configure the web interface, find and uncomment the section that begins with set httpd port 2812. If you wish, you can change the default port at which Monit web interface will be accessible. We are going to keep it same. Additionally, we will set a username and password for the web interface. You can also decide to give Read-Write or Read Only permissions based on user groups.

 set httpd port 2812 and
#    use address localhost  # only accept connection from localhost
#    allow localhost        # allow localhost to connect to the server and
    allow username:password      # require user 'username' with password 'password'
#    allow @monit           # allow users of group 'monit' to connect (rw)
#    allow @users readonly  # allow users of group 'users' to connect readonly

Make sure to enable port 2812 on your server .

Monitoring and Automatically restarting MySQL with Monit

Add the following lines in Monit configuration file, for enabling monitoring of MySQL. Monit will restart MySQL whenever it is unable to find MySQL running.

check process mysqld with pidfile /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
    start program = "/etc/init.d/mysql start"
    stop program = "/etc/init.d/mysql stop"

Note that, you can add additional action and checks which I am not showing here. The above piece of configuration is sufficient to keep a watch on MySQL and restarting it in case of process termination.

Monitoring and Automatically restarting Nginx with Monit

Add the following lines in Monit configuration file, for enabling monitoring of Nginx. Monit will restart Nginx whenever it is unable to find a process for Nginx running.

check process nginx with pidfile /var/run/nginx.pid
    start program = "/etc/init.d/nginx start"
    stop program = "/etc/init.d/nginx stop"

Monitoring and Automatically restarting Apache with Monit

Add the following lines in Monit configuration file, for enabling monitoring of Apache. Monit will restart Apache whenever it is unable to find Apache running.

check process apache with pidfile /run/apache2.pid
    start program = "/etc/init.d/apache2 start"
    stop program  = "/etc/init.d/apache2 stop"

Note that, you can add additional check and actions for Apache too. Consult the Monit Documentation for full set of actions and checks possible.

Start Monit

Once you are done with editing the configuration file, all that is left is to start Monit/reload configuration and start monitoring of all services via the following commands.

sudo monit
sudo monit reload  #in case monit was already started
sudo monit start all

That’s it. You should have Monit running and monitoring all the configured programs. You can check the status of Monit using the following command.

sudo monit status

Or simply connect to your server on port 2812 to access the Web Interface.

http://server_ip:2812

Monit to the Rescue

I manage multiple servers, most of which are running WordPress which I have configured on Nginx and MySQL. Monit is a crucial tool for me to keep my websites and webapps running even when occasionally MySQL or some other service crashes. Of-course, this doesn’t mean that, you should not investigate the root cause of such crashes, but Monit will at-least help you keep your sanity while you are doing so. :)

Postgres & Monit

There are at least two ways to have Monit start a postgres server.

One way is to use the postgres init script that comes with some postgres RPMs:

 check process postgresql with pidfile /opt/postgres/data/postmaster.pid
    group database
    start program = "/etc/init.d/postgresql start"
    stop  program = "/etc/init.d/postgresql stop"
 if failed unixsocket /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 protocol pgsql then restart
 if failed unixsocket /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 protocol pgsql then alert
 if failed host localhost port 5432 protocol pgsql then restart
 if failed host localhost port 5432 protocol pgsql then alert
 if 5 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout

Another way is to make calls directly to pg_ctl as the postgres (or other non-root user):

 check process postgresql with pidfile /opt/postgre//data/postmaster.pid
    group database
    start program = "/opt/postgres/bin/pg_ctl start"
       as uid postgres and gid postgres
    stop  program = "/opt/postgres/bin/pg_ctl stop"
       as uid postgres and gid postgres
 if failed unixsocket /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 protocol pgsql then restart
 if failed unixsocket /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 protocol pgsql then alert
 if failed host localhost port 5432 protocol pgsql then restart
 if failed host localhost port 5432 protocol pgsql then alert
 if 5 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout

In both examples, we are doing belt and suspenders monitoring, checking both the unixsocket and TCP ports for functionality.

Monitoring Messages Generated

Even though Monit starts Postgres using either the postgres UID/GID or calls the postgres init script (which ultimately uses 'su - postgres -c "command"' to start the DB), the tests that Monit run against the processes are run as root.

This ends up generating messages in postgres logs that look similar to this:

ESTrootFATAL:  database "root" does not exist

With the Monit job definitions above, 4 error messages get generated each time Monit runs tests against the postgres servers. This behavior is confirmed on Monit 4.10.1 and Postgres 8.3.4. On the server this behavior was observed on, the tests were exactly 22 seconds apart.

Postgres, barring a specific user argument and database argument presented on the command line, defaults to connect as the UID making the request to a database named the same as the UID. In the tests that Monit runs, that means connecting to a postgres server as root will require the postgres server to have both a root user and a root database. A default postgres install has neither... at least mine don't.

Idealy, the pgsql protocol test would allow a username and a database name to be specified in the monit job. Since that isn't the case, workarounds exist.

There are two ways to solve this problem and clean up the logs.

Change Postgres.

   1. Create DB user `root'.
   2. Create a database 'root' owned by root. It doesn't need to contain any data.
   3. Add these descriptions to pg_hba.conf;

      host   root  root  127.0.0.1/32  trust          <= for test via TCP port
      local  root  root  ident         sameuser       <= for test via UNIX socket

This solution is proposed by the author of the Monit pgsql test. Original post on the subject can be found here.

Change the tests.

This test doesn't provide the same level of monitoring as using the pgsql protocol, but would sufice to tell if the postgres server is accepting TCP connections.

if failed host localhost port 5432 type TCP then restart
if failed host localhost port 5432 type TCP then alert

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