Getting started

#Overview

Glassmkr has two parts:

• Dashboard is the hosted service at app.glassmkr.com. It stores your data, evaluates alerts, and renders server health.
• Crucible is the MIT-licensed agent. It runs on your server, collects health data, and pushes snapshots to the Dashboard.

You register a server in the Dashboard (which gives you a collector key), then install Crucible on that server with the key. That is the entire flow for a single server.

Last verified: 2026-06-26 against Crucible v0.13.12.

#Prerequisites

• A Linux server (Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, Rocky, Alma, Arch, or Alpine).
• Root or sudo access.
• Outbound HTTPS (port 443) to app.glassmkr.com. No inbound ports required.

#Step 1: Create a Dashboard account

Go to app.glassmkr.com and sign up with email, Google, or GitHub. Free accounts can monitor up to 3 servers with 7-day retention.

#Step 2: Register a server

After logging in, click + Add Server. Enter a name (for example, web-01 or db-prod).

The Dashboard generates a collector key that starts with gmk_cru_live_. This key is shown once. Copy it. Servers created before Crucible 0.9.0 may have a legacy col_xxx key; both formats work.

#Step 3: Install Crucible

SSH into your server. The dashboard shows the exact command with your collector key pre-filled. The bootstrap installer is:

curl -sf https://glassmkr.com/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- --api-key gmk_cru_live_your_key_here

The installer:

• Installs Node.js 24 if not present.
• Installs smartmontools (SMART disk monitoring).
• Installs ipmitool if available (IPMI hardware monitoring).
• Runs glassmkr-crucible init to validate the key against the Dashboard, write /etc/glassmkr/crucible.yaml (mode 0600; migrates a pre-0.13.5 /etc/glassmkr/collector.yaml in place when present), and install the systemd unit.
• Starts the glassmkr-crucible service (runs as the non-root glassmkr user).

Reading the key from a password manager? Pipe it through stdin:

op read "op://Private/Dashboard/key" | sudo glassmkr-crucible init --api-key -

The legacy --dashboard-key flag is preserved as an alias for --api-key so existing Ansible or Terraform automation keeps working without changes.

npm install

If you would rather not pipe to bash:

sudo npm install -g @glassmkr/crucible
sudo glassmkr-crucible init --api-key gmk_cru_live_your_key_here

Docker install

The containerized agent reads its key from /etc/glassmkr/crucible.yaml on the host (it does not read a key from the environment), so create the config first, then start the container with it mounted. The image is on Docker Hub:

# 1. Create the config (replace with your Dashboard key)
sudo mkdir -p /etc/glassmkr
sudo tee /etc/glassmkr/crucible.yaml << 'EOF'
server_name: "web-01"
dashboard:
  enabled: true
  url: "https://app.glassmkr.com"
  api_key: "gmk_cru_live_your_key_here"
EOF

# 2. Run the agent (privileged + host namespaces so it monitors the host, not the container)
docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped --name glassmkr-crucible \
  --pid=host --net=host --privileged \
  -v /etc/glassmkr:/etc/glassmkr:ro \
  docker.io/glassmkr/crucible:latest

Run glassmkr-crucible init --help to see the full flag list (custom server name, alternate Dashboard URL, etc.).

#Step 4: Verify

Check that Crucible is running:

sudo systemctl status glassmkr-crucible

You should see active (running). Check the logs for the first collection:

sudo journalctl -u glassmkr-crucible --since "5 min ago" --no-pager

Expected output (the first collection may take a few seconds longer than later ones):

[collector] Starting. Server: web-01. Interval: 60s
[collector] IPMI: enabled, SMART: enabled
[collector] Dashboard: https://app.glassmkr.com
[collector] Collecting...
[collector] Collected in 1013ms. Alerts: 0 active, 0 new, 0 resolved

=== First collection complete ===
Server: web-01 (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS)
CPU:    5.3% (load: 0.14)
RAM:    12.1% (1940 / 16036 MB)
Disk:   23% (/)
SMART:  2 drive(s) checked
Network: eth0, eth1
IPMI:   available
Active alerts: 0
Dashboard: enabled

[dashboard] Push successful. Active alerts: 0

Within 60 seconds (one collection interval), the server appears on the Dashboard with live data. The Dashboard evaluates all 65 alert rules on each push.

Last verified: 2026-05-22. Default snapshot interval is 60 seconds in Crucible v0.10.0 and later.

#Two kinds of keys

Glassmkr uses two key types:

#Next steps

• Set up notification channels (email, Telegram, Slack, Discord, PagerDuty, webhooks) with per-channel priority filtering.
• Review the 65 alert rules grouped across 9 categories.
• Explore the full configuration reference for thresholds, intervals, and optional collectors.
• API reference for programmatic access.