karma/README.md

# karma

Alert dashboard for
[Prometheus Alertmanager](https://prometheus.io/docs/alerting/alertmanager/).

---

Alertmanager `>=0.19.0` is required as older versions might not show all
receivers in karma, see
[issue #812](https://github.com/prymitive/karma/issues/812) for details.

---

See [GitHub Releases](https://github.com/prymitive/karma/releases) for release
changelog.

## Feature overview

Alertmanager UI is useful for browsing alerts and managing silences, but it's
lacking as a dashboard tool - karma aims to fill this gap.

### Alert aggregation and deduplication

Starting with the `0.7.0` release it can aggregate alerts from multiple
Alertmanager instances, running either in HA mode or separate. Unique alerts are
displayed by filtering duplicates. Each alert is tagged with the names of all
Alertmanager instances it was found at and can be filtered based on those tags
(`@alertmanager`). Note that `@alertmanager` tags will be visible only if karma
is configured with multiple Alertmanager instances.
If alertmanger is configured to use
[HA clusters](https://prometheus.io/docs/alerting/latest/alertmanager/#high-availability)
then `@cluster` will be available as well, to set a custom name for each cluster
see [CONFIGURATION.md](docs/CONFIGURATION.md#alertmanagers).

![Screenshot](/docs/img/screenshot.png)

### Alert visualization

#### Alert groups

Alerts are displayed grouped preserving
[group_by](https://prometheus.io/docs/alerting/configuration/#route)
configuration option in Alertmanager.
Note that a unique alert group will be created for each receiver it uses in
alertmanager as they can have different `group_by` settings.
If a group contains multiple alerts only
the first few alerts will be presented. Alerts are expanded or hidden
using - / + buttons. The default number of alerts can be configured in the UI
settings module.
Each group can be collapsed to only show the title bar using top right toggle
icon.
Each individual alert will show unique labels and annotations. Labels
and annotations that are shared between all alerts are moved to the footer.

Active alerts will show recently expired silences, to allow re-silincing
if needed.
This is controlled via `silences:expired` setting. `10m` value would show
silences expired in the last 10 minutes but only for alerts that started firing
more than 10 minutes ago.

![Example](/docs/img/alertGroup.png)

#### Alert history

Alertmanager doesn't currently provide any long term storage of alert events
or a way to query for historical alerts, but each Prometheus server sending
alerts stores metrics related to triggered alerts.
When `history:enabled` is `true` karma will use `source` fields from each alert
to try querying alert related metrics on remote Prometheus servers.
The result is the number of times given alert group triggered an alert per hour
in the last 24h, displayed as 24 blocks. The darker the color the more alerts
were triggered in that hour, as compared by all other hours.

![Example](/docs/img/alertHistory.png)

For this feature to work karma must be able to connect to all Prometheus servers
sending alerts. Be sure to set `--web.external-url` Prometheus flag to a publicly
reachable URL of each server.

#### Inhibited alerts

Inhibited alerts (suppressed by other alerts,
[see Alertmanager docs](https://prometheus.io/docs/alerting/latest/alertmanager/#inhibition))
will have a "muted" button.

![Inhibited alert](/docs/img/inhibited.png)

Clicking on that button will bring a modal with a list of inhibiting alerts.

![Inhibiting alerts](/docs/img/inhibitedByModal.png)

#### Silence deduplication

If all alerts in a group were suppressed by the same silence then, to save
screen space, the silence will also be moved to the footer.

![Deduplicated silence](/docs/img/footerSilence.png)

### Label based multi-grid

To help separate alerts from different environments or with different level of
severity multi-grid mode can be enabled, which adds another layer of visually
grouping alert groups.
To enable this mode go to the configuration modal and select a label name, all
alerts will be grouped by that label, each label value will have a dedicated
grid, including an extra grid for alerts without that label present.

![Example](/docs/img/multiGrid.png)

### Silence management

Silence modal allows to create new silences and manage all silences already
present in Alertmanager.
Silence ACL rules can be used to control silence creation and editing, see
[ACLs](/docs/ACLs.md) docs for more details.

![Silence browser](/docs/img/silenceBrowser.png)

### Alert overview

Clicking on the alert counter in the top left corner will open the overview
modal, which allows to quickly get an overview of the top label values for
all current alerts.

![Overview](/docs/img/overview.png)

### Alert acknowledgement

Starting with `v0.50` karma can create short lived silences to acknowledge
alerts with a single button click. To create silences that will resolve itself
only after all alerts are resolved you can use
[kthxbye](https://github.com/prymitive/kthxbye).
See [configuration docs](/docs/CONFIGURATION.md#alert-acknowledgement) for
details.

### Dead Man’s Switch support

Starting with `v0.78` karma can be configured to check for
[Dead Man’s Switch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man%27s_switch)
style alerts (alert that is always firing). If no alert is found in given
alertmanager karma will show an error in the UI.
See `healthcheck:filters` option on [configuration docs](/docs/CONFIGURATION.md#alertmanagers)
for details.

### Dark mode

Starting with `v0.52` release karma includes both light and dark themes.
By default it will follow browser preference using
[prefers-color-scheme](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme)
media queries.

![Dark mode](/docs/img/dark.png)

## Demo

[Online demo](https://karma-demo.herokuapp.com/) is running latest main branch
or PR branch version. It might include features that are experimental and not
yet ready to be included.

## Release notes

Release notes can be found on
[GitHub Release Page](https://github.com/prymitive/karma/releases).

To get notifications about new karma releases go to
[GitHub karma page](https://github.com/prymitive/karma), click `Watch` and
select `Releases only`. This requires GitHub user account.
To subscribe to email notifications without GitHub account you can subscribe to
the RSS feed that
[GitHub provides](https://github.com/prymitive/karma/releases.atom).
To get email notifications from those feeds use one of the free services
providing _RSS to email_ notifications, like
[Blogtrottr](https://blogtrottr.com/).

## History

I created karma while working for [Cloudflare](https://cloudflare.com/),
originally it was called [unsee](https://github.com/cloudflare/unsee).
This project is based on that code but the UI part was rewritten from scratch
using [React](https://reactjs.org/). New UI required changes to the backend so
the API is also incompatible.
Given that the React rewrite resulted in roughly 50% of new code and to avoid
confusion for user I've decided to rename it to karma, especially that the
original project wasn't being maintained anymore.

## Supported Alertmanager versions

Alertmanager's API isn't stable yet and can change between releases, see
`VERSIONS` in [internal/mock/Makefile](/internal/mock/Makefile) for list of all
Alertmanager releases that are tested and supported by karma.
Due to API differences between those releases some features will work
differently or be missing, it's recommended to use the latest supported
Alertmanager version.

## Security

karma doesn't in any way alter alerts in any Alertmanager instance it collects
data from. This is true for both the backend and the web UI.
The web UI allows to manage silences by sending requests to Alertmanager
instances, this can be done directly (browser to Alertmanager API) or by
proxying such requests via karma backend (browser to karma backend to
Alertmanager API) if `proxy` mode is enabled in karma config.

If you wish to deploy karma as a read-only tool without giving users any ability
to modify data in Alertmanager instance, then please ensure that:

- the karma process is able to connect to the Alertmanager API
- read-only users are able to connect to the karma web interface
- read-only users are NOT able to connect to the Alertmanager API
- `readonly` is set to `true` in
  [alertmanager:servers](/docs/CONFIGURATION.md#alertmanagers) config section
  for all alertmanager instances, this options will disable any UI elements that
  could trigger updates (like silence management)

To restrict some users from creating silences or enforce some matcher rules use
[silence ACL rules](/docs/ACLs.md). This feature requires `proxy` to be enabled.

## Metrics

karma process metrics are accessible under `/metrics` path by default.
If you set the `--listen.prefix` option a path relative to it will be
used.

## Building and running

### Building from source

To clone git repo and build the binary yourself run:

    git clone https://github.com/prymitive/karma $GOPATH/src/github.com/prymitive/karma
    cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/prymitive/karma

To finally compile `karma` the binary run:

    make

Note that building locally from sources requires Go, nodejs and yarn.
See Docker build options below for instructions on building from withing docker
container.

## Running

`karma` can be configured using config file, command line flags or environment
variables. Config file is the recommended method, it's also the only way to
configure karma to use multiple Alertmanager servers for collecting alerts.
To run karma with a single Alertmanager server set `ALERTMANAGER_URI`
environment variable or pass `--alertmanger.uri` flag on the command line, with
Alertmanager URI as argument, example:

    ALERTMANAGER_URI=https://alertmanager.example.com karma
    karma --alertmanager.uri https://alertmanager.example.com

There is a make target which will compile and run a demo karma docker image:

    make run-demo

By default it will listen on port `8080` and will have mock alerts.

## Docker

### Running pre-build docker image

Official docker images are built and hosted on
[Github](https://github.com/users/prymitive/packages/container/package/karma).

Images are built automatically for:

- release tags in git - `ghcr.io/prymitive/karma:vX.Y.Z`
- main branch commits - `ghcr.io/prymitive/karma:latest`

_NOTE_ karma uses [uber-go/automaxprocs](https://github.com/uber-go/automaxprocs)
to automatically adjust `GOMAXPROCS` to match Linux container CPU quota.

#### Examples

To start a release image run:

    docker run -e ALERTMANAGER_URI=https://alertmanager.example.com ghcr.io/prymitive/karma:vX.Y.Z

Latest release details can be found on
[GitHub](https://github.com/prymitive/karma/releases).

To start docker image build from lastet main branch run:

    docker run -e ALERTMANAGER_URI=https://alertmanager.example.com ghcr.io/prymitive/karma:latest

Note that latest main branch might have bugs or breaking changes. Using
release images is strongly recommended for any production use.

### Building a Docker image

    make docker-image

This will build a Docker image locally from sources.

### Health checks

`/health` endpoint can be used for health check probes, it always responds with
`200 OK` code and `Pong` response body.

## Configuration

Please see [CONFIGURATION](/docs/CONFIGURATION.md) for full list of available
configuration options and [example.yaml](/docs/example.yaml) for a config file
example.

## Contributing

Please see [CONTRIBUTING](/CONTRIBUTING.md) for details.

## License

Apache License 2.0, please see [LICENSE](/LICENSE).