Demo
Demo

Knowledge base

PMTA knowledge base›Monitor screen§ 5.3

Node status

Status Monitor Display
Everything important on one screen

Shows node state and refreshes itself every few seconds.

Traffic is shown on five horizons: totals since startup, the last hour and the last minute, peaks per hour and per minute. Each peak counter is measured separately: the peak of inbound recipients and the peak of inbound kilobytes may have happened at different times.

Connections — now, the peak since the last restart and the ceiling: how many simultaneous connections are available given the license key and the configured limits.

The rest: DNS cache entries and pending queries, spool files — in use and recycled — whether spool loading after startup is still in progress, and queues by delivery method.

/status?format=json returns the same set of numbers — the only response the manual quotes in full.

Access is decided by http-access based on the address the browser is opened from — the monitor level is enough for viewing.

The main trap is combining peaks into one picture. The “peak per minute” for recipients and for kilobytes are different minutes: the counters are measured independently, and they cannot be added up into “the node’s best minute”.
What the Hub does. It does not use the page but takes the same numbers with the /status?format=json request: every minute for telemetry and when the “PMTA monitoring” screen opens — on the “Overview” tab.
Recommended values

Page sections:

Section What it shows
totals, hour, minute traffic since startup and for the window
peaks per hour and per minute best values, each its own
connections now, the peak since restart, the ceiling by license and settings
DNS names cache entries and pending queries
spool files and spool loading files in use and recycled; whether loading is finished
queues recipients, domains and volume by delivery method
The page sections, the refresh rate, the independence of peak counters and the connection ceiling given the license come from the manual (§ 5.2, § 5.3). The table is ours.
Example configuration
# the same page as a structure and in the console
curl -s 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/status?format=json'pmta show status
The console command prints the same sections as text — without a browser.
yellow — — directive names, blue — blocks. They are highlighted the same way in the text of the card.
Compatibility
PowerMTA 6.0
described in the manual of this version · platform: any
The vendor does not state the first version for every directive — there is no note here. The name also appears in the 5.0 edition of the manual.
⇄

Related entries

3 relations

Can be replaced by

The whole node state in one documentThe same thing, returned by a request. § 5.3Node status in the consoleThe same output from the command line. inference

Applies to

What the node tells about itself and through which channelsThe mechanism that is visible here. § 4.1.1

How to check on the node
Compare the page with the console:
pmta show status
curl -s 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/status?format=json' | head -40
While spool loading is not finished, the queue counters keep growing: the engine is still reading spool files after startup.
◇

What else to read

3 articles

◇What the node tells about itself and through which channelsSeven observation surfaces: the web monitor, the console in four formats, the log, accounting, accounting search, metrics and export to external analytics.◇The log and accounting — two files and two different questionsThe engine keeps a separate log and a separate accounting file; the separation is made for the sake of format, performance and the ability to hand over the log without disclosing data.◇A file, a program or an endpoint — and a file under each of the threeThree ways to hand off accounting records; an endpoint still has a file underneath, which is deleted only after a successful send, and a non-2xx response triggers a retry.

In the Hub
Cost of a mistake
safe: a wrong value breaks nothing
Scenarios
Untangle a stuck queue · Collect telemetry