Frank
dc76dc5dc4
Context: 262144 was measured before it was deployed -- 24.72 GB on GPU 0 and 29.14 GB on GPU 1 of 34.21 GB each, ~5 GB of headroom on the busier card, and a 140,069-token prompt prefilled through the single slot in 134 s to prove the window is real. The 114688 wall was the vLLM predecessor's arithmetic, not this runtime's. Throughput, measured through the service: 1.0-1.4k tok/s prefill from 4k to 140k, 43.8 tok/s decode on a 512-token generation, 41-71 % DFlash2 acceptance, and the prefix cache re-prefilling 4 of 998 tokens on a repeated prompt. The signals move with the runtime, so the fleet's rules and dashboard are re-cut rather than renamed: vllm: series do not exist any more, and two of the old rules watched things llama.cpp does not export at all (KV-pool fill, p95 latency). Those are retired with the reason written down, and LlmSpecDecodeOff takes one of the slots -- a lost drafter is the failure no client can see. The observability seam now fails if any rule names a series the endpoint does not export, which is what would have caught the stale vllm: expressions. omp models.yml (outside the repo) is updated in the same pass: contextWindow 262144, and the full reasoning-effort map, because Qwen3.8's template answers 500 on 'high' -- verified against the live endpoint, low/medium/xhigh answer 200. Subagents run at high.
143 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
143 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
type: reference
|
|
title: Observability on Dankclaw
|
|
description: The Dankclaw observability stack — Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Alloy and node-exporter: what runs, how it is deployed, how it is exposed, and what is still unconfigured.
|
|
tags: [observability, prometheus, grafana, loki, alloy, node-exporter, quadlet, dankclaw]
|
|
timestamp: 2026-09-11
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
# Observability
|
|
|
|
The observability stack runs on Dankclaw: Prometheus for metrics, Loki for logs, Alloy as the shipper, Grafana for dashboards and node-exporter for host metrics. This is a small homelab — no Kubernetes.
|
|
|
|
## Stack
|
|
|
|
```mermaid
|
|
graph LR
|
|
S[Services] -->|/metrics| P[Prometheus]
|
|
H[Host] -->|":9100"| P
|
|
S -->|logs| A[Alloy]
|
|
J[journald] --> A
|
|
A --> L[Loki]
|
|
P --> G[Grafana]
|
|
L --> G
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
| Component | Role | Image | Published |
|
|
|-----------|------|-------|-----------|
|
|
| [[Prometheus]] | metrics collection | `prom/prometheus` | `127.0.0.1:9090` |
|
|
| [[Grafana]] | dashboards | `grafana/grafana` | `127.0.0.1:3002` |
|
|
| [[Loki]] | log storage & query | `franksdank/loki` (local build) | `127.0.0.1:3100` |
|
|
| [[Alloy]] | log shipping | `franksdank/alloy` (local build) | `127.0.0.1:12345` |
|
|
| [[Node-Exporter]] | host metrics | `prom/node-exporter` | `192.168.0.143:9100`, host netns |
|
|
|
|
## Current state: installed, healthy, and mostly unconfigured
|
|
|
|
Recorded 2026-09-11, on the day the stack moved to Quadlet units. Everything in the table above is deployed, healthy and boot-persistent. Almost nothing is wired up beyond the default install:
|
|
|
|
- **Grafana has a datasource and one dashboard as of 2026-09-16; before that it had neither.** `shared/grafana/provisioning/` is installed to `/opt/grafana/provisioning` by the deployer and read by the container: the Prometheus datasource (`http://prometheus:9090`, fixed uid `prometheus`) and the **LLM fleet — capacity and reuse** dashboard (speculative acceptance, queue depth, prefix-cache reuse, decode step rate, throughput) covering the llama.cpp endpoints. **Re-cut on 2026-09-16**: the panels were keyed to `vllm:` series, which stopped existing when frank-medium moved to llama.cpp, and two of them (KV-pool fill, request-latency p95) have no llama.cpp equivalent at all — those two are retired rather than restated, and the acceptance panel replaces the KV one. A renamed query against a series that does not exist is a panel that draws nothing forever. Verified through the API rather than by eye — the datasource answers `llamacpp:` counters for `frank-medium`, and `GET /api/search?type=dash-db` returns uid `llm-fleet`. One trap worth knowing: a provisioned dashboard does **not** appear in the legacy `dashboard` table on this Grafana version (it lives in unified storage …
|
|
- **Grafana's dashboard now also surfaces firing alerts.** The **Alerts firing (ALERTS)** panel graphs `ALERTS{alertstate="firing"}` for the LLM rules, because this stack has no other place where an alert becomes visible without opening Prometheus.
|
|
- **Prometheus now evaluates rules; nothing delivers them (2026-09-16).** `shared/prometheus/rules/llm-fleet.yml` ships with the config (the deployer's `copy_prometheus_config` installs both — a rule file nothing loads evaluates nothing, and Prometheus reports no error for that) and holds five rules for the LLM fleet: request queueing, prefix-cache collapse, speculative decoding off, endpoint down, plus the `job:llm_prefix_cache_reuse:rate5m` recording rule the alert and the dashboard share. **Two rules from the vLLM era were retired, not renamed**, because the series they watched no longer exist: KV-pool saturation (llama.cpp exports no KV-fill gauge; its consequence *is* queueing, which `LlmRequestsQueueing` already covers) and p95 request latency (no latency histogram). `LlmSpecDecodeOff` takes the second slot — the failure a client cannot see, since a lost drafter just halves the speed. Verified with `promtool check rules` and `/api/v1/rules` (`health=ok` for all five). **There is still no Alertmanager and no contact point anywhere**: a firing alert appears on Prometheus' `/alerts`, in the `ALERTS` metric and on the LLM fleet dashboard'…
|
|
- **Loki is configured but unread.** Storage is filesystem with 30-day retention, `auth_enabled: false`, and the push path works; Grafana can now reach it in Explore, but no dashboard or alert consumes it.
|
|
- **node-exporter runs its default collector set** — no collector tuning, no textfile collector for custom metrics.
|
|
- **Alloy is the one configured piece.** It ships the host journal and podman container logs to Loki with `job` labels, and that pipeline is live.
|
|
|
|
The honest summary: metrics and logs are collected and retained, one dashboard visualizes the LLM fleet, five rules evaluate over it, and **no rule reaches a person** — there is no Alertmanager and no contact point, so correlation stays manual and every signal has to be looked at.
|
|
|
|
## Deployment
|
|
|
|
Six units now, across two hosts. Dankclaw runs five (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki,
|
|
Alloy, node-exporter) from `dankclaw/observability/quadlet/`; **Dankserver runs
|
|
its own node-exporter** from `dankserver/observability/quadlet/`, added
|
|
2026-09-16 after the same reboot argument took it down a second time — it had
|
|
been a compose-only service, died `Exited (143)` at a reboot, and left
|
|
Prometheus' `node-dankserver` job scraping nothing for a day and a half (its
|
|
compose form also bound the wildcard address). The deployer installs from
|
|
`"$TARGET/observability/quadlet"`, so each host owns its own units.
|
|
|
|
The Dankclaw five left `dankclaw/compose.yaml` on 2026-09-11, after a reboot proved that compose-only containers do not come back on their own — the same gap that had already taken Caddy and Pi-hole down at earlier reboots, and the one that finally caught Dankserver's node-exporter. **What runs is now the unit; the compose file is the historical record.**
|
|
|
|
```bash
|
|
./scripts/deploy.sh dankclaw --service loki # or prometheus|grafana|alloy|node-exporter
|
|
./scripts/deploy.sh dankserver --service node-exporter
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
`deploy_observability` in `scripts/deploy-remote.sh` installs the unit, restarts it and waits on its endpoint. Ordering lives in the units themselves (Grafana wants Prometheus, Alloy wants Loki), and `SERVICE_ORDER` in the planner puts each dependency first.
|
|
|
|
Every unit carries a healthcheck, so a wedged process reads `unhealthy` in `podman ps` rather than merely `Up`. See [[Loki]] for the one unit that cannot declare it inline.
|
|
|
|
## Exposure
|
|
|
|
The rule is the same as for every other service: the only off-host path is a guarded vhost (`<name>.franksdank.cloud` → Anubis → Authentik embedded outpost). Two consequences are easy to get wrong:
|
|
|
|
- **Prometheus, Grafana, Loki and Alloy publish on `127.0.0.1` only.** Caddy reaches them by container name over the `dankclaw_default` network, and the host-side homepage status timer probes loopback. Publishing on `0.0.0.0` — what the compose services did — put an unauthenticated metrics API (with the lifecycle endpoint enabled), dashboard, log store and log-ingest endpoint on every host interface, which is a bypass around the guard chain.
|
|
- **node-exporter is the one deliberate LAN listener, and there are two of them now — one per host.** Prometheus runs in a container and cannot reach either host's loopback, so each unit binds exactly two addresses: loopback (`127.0.0.1:9100`) for host-local probes and its own LAN address (`192.168.0.143:9100` on Dankclaw, `192.168.0.235:9100` on Dankserver) for Prometheus. `ss -ltn` on Dankserver shows exactly those two listeners and no wildcard. Neither authenticates anything, so neither gets a vhost.
|
|
|
|
## Scrape surface
|
|
|
|
`shared/prometheus/prometheus.yml` is the source of truth (installed to `/opt/prometheus/config/` on every deploy). It scrapes:
|
|
|
|
| Job | Target | Notes |
|
|
|-----|--------|-------|
|
|
| `prometheus` | `localhost:9090` | itself |
|
|
| `node-dankclaw`, `node-dankserver` | `192.168.0.143:9100`, `192.168.0.235:9100` | one node-exporter per host |
|
|
| `gitea` | `192.168.0.143:3000` | published LAN port (Gitea is on an isolated network) |
|
|
| `grafana`, `loki` | `grafana:3000`, `loki:3100` | container names on `dankclaw_default` |
|
|
| `comfyui` | `comfyui:8188` | UI probe, no native exporter |
|
|
| `services` | `192.168.0.143:8081`, `:3005` | SearXNG, OpenWebUI up/down probes |
|
|
| `frank-medium` | `192.168.0.235:7770` | llama.cpp on Dankserver — `llamacpp:` counters, including the spec-decode pair |
|
|
| `frank-small` | `192.168.0.143:7771` | llama.cpp on Dankclaw's RTX 3090 — `llamacpp:` counters, including the spec-decode pair |
|
|
|
|
The LLM endpoints were added on 2026-09-16, after a night spent diagnosing
|
|
frank-medium by hand, and re-cut the same day when Dankclaw split into two
|
|
endpoints. The vLLM runtime behind that diagnosis is retired; frank-medium
|
|
now runs mainline llama.cpp, and the endpoint exports llama.cpp's own
|
|
counters — prompt and decode throughput, KV fill, and the `spec_decode_*`
|
|
pair that proves the DFlash2 drafter is running. What those numbers mean on
|
|
this hardware is in [[frank-medium-llamacpp-dflash2]]; the same counter
|
|
family on frank-small is read against [[frank-small-qwen38-gsq-rco]].
|
|
|
|
**`frank-large` is deliberately NOT scraped.** The halogen engine publishes
|
|
`/health`, `/cache` and `/v1/*` and no Prometheus text endpoint at all, so a
|
|
target there would be red by construction and would fire `LlmEndpointDown`
|
|
forever — the same class of defect as the page-only probes below. Its liveness
|
|
is on the homepage (a loopback probe) and in the engine's own boot ledger.
|
|
|
|
Both scraped endpoints are reached on their LAN addresses, never through the
|
|
guarded vhosts: Prometheus cannot solve an Anubis challenge.
|
|
|
|
For services without a native exporter, use the Prometheus **blackbox exporter** in probe mode to assert up/down and HTTP latency. The homepage status timer probes the same endpoints from the host.
|
|
|
|
**Four targets read "down" — three jobs, and every one of them is structural**
|
|
(found 2026-09-16 while auditing why the target list was not green):
|
|
|
|
| job | error | what it means |
|
|
|-----|-------|---------------|
|
|
| `comfyui` | `unsupported Content-Type "text/html"` | the service is **up** (this is what it says since ComfyUI was fixed — before that it read `connection refused`); Prometheus refuses to parse an HTML page as metrics, so this job cannot succeed as configured |
|
|
| `services` (SearXNG, OpenWebUI) | `unsupported Content-Type "text/html; charset=utf-8"` | same defect: "blackbox-style probes" that scrape a page instead of metrics |
|
|
| `gitea` | `HTTP status 404 Not Found` | `/metrics` does not exist on that Gitea (metrics disabled); the service itself is fine |
|
|
|
|
None of these is an outage, and none should be silenced by deleting the job —
|
|
an absent scrape and a healthy one look identical. The fix the repository
|
|
already names is a **blackbox exporter** in probe mode for the page-only
|
|
targets, and either enabling Gitea's metrics or pointing the job at the right
|
|
path. The LLM alert rules (`LlmEndpointDown`) are scoped to `frank-*`, so these
|
|
probes generate no false pages.
|
|
|
|
## Log aggregation choice
|
|
|
|
Loki + Alloy is the lightweight Grafana-native option for a two-server homelab:
|
|
|
|
- Alloy reads container logs from the host (journald socket + container log files) and pushes them to Loki. It replaces Promtail, which reached end-of-life on 2026-03-02.
|
|
- Loki stores compressed logs with labels; queries run in Grafana's Explore.
|
|
- No Elasticsearch memory cost, no Kubernetes required.
|
|
|
|
Alternatives considered and rejected: ELK (too heavy), Promtail (EOL), VictoriaLogs (newer, less documentation), plain `journald` (no centralized query).
|
|
|
|
## See Also
|
|
|
|
- [[Grafana]], [[Prometheus]], [[Loki]], [[Alloy]], [[Node-Exporter]] — the components
|
|
- [[Dankclaw Stack]] — the rest of the host
|
|
- [[Homepage]] — the user-facing status surface, including the five status cards
|
|
- [[Deployment Flow]] — the verify-before-declared-deployed contract
|