README

system-helpers - Collection of helper systemd services, systemd timers and shell scripts for common configuration.

It can help you out for small servers where you think a proper monitoring and alerting system like Prometheus and AlertManager is too much.

The notifier script can send notifications via mail or gotify.

system-helpers collection provides the following helpers

• notifier which sends notifications via mail or gotify (see see notifier)
• checking if systemd services and timers are running (see man systemd_check)
• borgmatic backup (see exposed systemd services borgmatic@ which require a valid borgmatic.yml file in /etc/borgmatic or your $HOME/.config/borgmatic)
• restic backup (see /usr/share/doc/system-helpers/restic for an example mybackup)
• checking if docker containers are running (see man docker_check)
• batch docker-compose upgrades (see man docker_compose_update)
• dynamic dns update (see man docker_compose_update)
• memory and disk checks (see man disk_space_alert and man memory_usage_alert)
• docker housekeeping for removing unused docker containers, volumes and images
• update check for pacman (ArchLinux specific, see man check_updates)

Provided systemd services mostly support mail notifications if they have failed via systemd_failure_notify.

See /usr/share/doc/system-helpers for example configurations which should be copied inside $HOME or /etc depending on the helper script.

Installation

Package manager for Arch Linux

1. Build a pacman package for ArchLinux via makepkg -csi inside the _pkg/ folder
2. Alternatively, use ./sync from the git clone and pick an action which should be self-explaining
3. Use the custom provided ArchLinux repository hosted at aur.myservermanager.com

[repo-aur-myservermanager-com]
SigLevel = Never
Server = https://aur.myservermanager.com

system-helpers-sync script to synchronize files to locations

1. Clone this repository
2. Run ./system-helpers-sync and use the option you like to use

Usage

Services and scripts don't depend on each other but have hints that they can be combined (out-commented line in service files for systemd_failure_notify@.service for example).

Examples are given inside usr/share/doc/system-helpers.

FAQ

User cannot use network-online.target

By default, no user unit can depend on system events like network-online.target. To enable this, you need to link the proper .target which you like to use inside the user service before.

systemctl --user link /usr/lib/systemd/system/network-online.target

This would make network-online.target available after a reboot to the user who issued the command.

network-online.target doesn't recognize DNS correctly

If you like to set Persistent=true, then you should probably equip the related .service file with a ExecStartPre=/bin/bash -c 'until host captiveportal.myservermanager.com; do sleep 1; done' or any domain you think is 100% reachable.