Using Inspector

1. First login

When Inspector starts for the first time it creates its config file and a dashboard login.

1. If you set INSPECTOR_PASSWORD in the Portainer stack, sign in with admin (or your INSPECTOR_USERNAME) and that password.
2. If you didn't, Inspector generated a password. In Portainer open Containers → inspector → Logs. Near the top you'll see a box labeled Inspector dashboard login with the username and password.
3. Open http://<your-server>:8080 and sign in.
4. Change the password under Settings → Dashboard if you like.

2. Add your containers

Inspector only watches containers you add. Go to Settings and click + Add container at the bottom of the left menu (or + New container on the All containers page).

1. name: the container's name exactly as Portainer shows it (for example sonarr). If it doesn't match, the card shows CONTAINER NOT FOUND.
2. Leave enabled on.
3. Under Restart when status is… click Recommended (restarts on UNHEALTHY and NOT RUNNING), or Observe only if you just want alerts without restarts.
4. Click Create container. Inspector starts watching it on its next check (within a minute by default). No restart needed.

What the numbers mean

3. The Status page

The top row counts containers, healthy ones, ones with issues, and ones in maintenance. Each card shows:

• Status badge: what Docker reports right now, e.g. HEALTHY NOT RUNNING NO HEALTH CHECK (the image has no health check; that's normal for many apps and only means Inspector can tell running from stopped, not healthy from unhealthy).
• Errors bar: bad checks in a row out of max_error_count. When it fills, Inspector restarts the container.
• Cooldown until / Last restart: when Inspector last restarted it and when it's allowed to again.
• Observe only: shown when the container has no restart triggers; Inspector alerts but never restarts it.
• Enter maintenance: pause Inspector for that container while you work on it (updates, migrations). Click again to exit.
• Mute notifications: keep watching and restarting, but stop alerts for a while (12 hours by default).

The page refreshes itself every 30 seconds.

4. Notifications

Inspector can alert you through Gotify, Pushover, or both. Set them up under Settings → Notifications.

1. Turn on enabled for the channel you use.
2. Gotify: enter your server URL and an application token (create one in Gotify under Apps). Pushover: enter your application API token and your user key.
3. Click Send test. You should get a message on your phone within seconds. If it fails, the reason appears next to the button.
4. Click Save, then restart Inspector once (see section 8), because turning a channel on or off is a "requires restart" field.

You'll get one alert when a container first fails, when Inspector restarts it, and when it recovers. You won't get one on every check.

5. Managing containers

Settings → All containers shows every watched container as a tile. Click a tile (or a name in the left menu) to edit it.

Changes apply on the next check. Delete container stops Inspector watching it; it does not touch the container itself.

Restart triggers

Reachability: catching apps that look fine but aren't

Docker only knows whether a container is running and whether its own health check passes. An app can pass both and still be unusable, for example when it routes through a VPN container whose tunnel dropped. Under Reachability on the container page you can add:

• HTTP check: a URL Inspector requests every check (for example http://192.168.1.10:9696/ping). Set expected_status to the code the app returns when it's healthy; most return 200, some return 401 or 302.
• Uptime Kuma monitor: if you already run Uptime Kuma, name one of its monitors. Set up the connection first in Settings → Uptime Kuma; Test connection lists the monitor names it can see.

A failed check reports UNREACHABLE. Tick UNREACHABLE in the restart triggers if you want Inspector to act on it.

Apps behind a VPN container

If an app shares a VPN container's network (network_mode: container:vpn or similar), set these on the app's page:

1. Dependencies → depends_on: pick the VPN container, and turn on vpn_routed. Inspector checks the VPN first and waits for it to recover before touching the app.
2. Recovery → recovery_action: choose Restart, then redeploy stack if that fails and enter the stack name exactly as Portainer shows it. When the VPN container gets recreated, a plain restart of the app fails; redeploying the stack reconnects it.

Stack redeploys need the Portainer connection in Settings → Portainer:

1. In Portainer, open My account → Access tokens and create a token.
2. Easiest and safest: add it to the Inspector stack as an environment variable (for example PORTAINER_API_TOKEN) and redeploy Inspector. Or choose Saved in config.yml and paste it in.
3. In Settings → Portainer, add an environment with Portainer's URL and endpoint ID (usually 1 or 2; it's the number in the URL when you open the environment in Portainer). Click Test connection: it should list your stacks.
4. Turn Portainer on and save.

6. Events history

The Events tab is a day-by-day timeline of failures, restarts, recoveries, mutes, and maintenance. Use Prev day / Next day to look back.

7. Other settings

At the bottom of every settings page is a strip showing where the config file lives and whether Inspector can write to it.

8. "Requires restart" fields

Most changes apply on the next check. Fields marked REQUIRES RESTART (like turning a notification channel or the dashboard on or off) only take effect after Inspector restarts:

1. In Portainer go to Containers.
2. Tick inspector and click Restart.

Your settings and history are kept; they live in the folders mounted into the container.

9. Troubleshooting