FAQ

The questions people actually ask before they run the script.
What is CleverUptime?

Smart server monitoring for Linux. It watches your servers from the inside and the outside, and when a service goes down or the box is in trouble, it tells you — by email, Slack, or SMS — what broke and, just as importantly, what to do about it.

What does it actually monitor?

The vital signs of a server, and the way the world reaches it:

  • CPU load, memory and swap
  • disk health and free space
  • DNS records and SSL certificates
  • open ports and service availability
  • running processes and users
How is it different from other monitoring tools?

The short version:

Most tools CleverUptime
Watch a handful of metrics
Usually just up/down, maybe a cron-job check 		Watch from both sides
Read the server from the inside and probe it from the internet
Run a closed-source agent
Not clear what it does on your box 		Run a short bash script
A handful of commands you can read in a couple of minutes
Make you configure every check
Slow, and easy to miss something 		Configure themselves
Detects what's running and sets up the right checks for you
Alert with no context
Often unclear what actually caused it 		Alert with the cause and the fix
Skip the symptom-chasing and go to the answer
Leave you on your own
Figure out the fix yourself 		Link to the knowledge base
Every alert points to a step-by-step guide for diagnosing and fixing it
How do I try it?

The fastest way is the server health check — one command, no signup, nothing installed. You see your own server's metrics and risks live, then decide. Or read how it works first.

What does it cost?

There's a free tier you can run a server on without paying anything, and paid plans for when you want more — the pricing page has the details. And the health check is free and needs no account at all, so you can see what CleverUptime does before you decide anything.

Why do I need to run a script on my server?

The script reads the things only the machine itself can see — CPU, memory, disk — and it's what lets CleverUptime figure out which external checks to set up for you. Prefer not to run it? You can still configure the outside-in monitors by hand.

Is the script safe?

Always be careful running other people's code on your server — there's only one way to make it safe, and that's to read it. Ours is short and plain on purpose; we walk through it line by line here.

What data does it collect — can you see my files?

It reads the things that tell it whether your server is healthy: CPU, memory, disk and load from /proc and /sys; the processes and services running; disk health via smartctl; and basic system facts — your distro and version, the user-account names from /etc/passwd, your DNS setup, and an ID to tell your servers apart. It does not read your password file (/etc/shadow), your databases, your application data, or the contents of your files. We collect the vital signs, not your secrets — and the script walkthrough shows you every single line that does the reading.

Does it need root?

Some health checks — reading SMART disk data, for one — need root, so the script usually runs as root or a privileged user. But it only ever reads: it gathers your server's vital signs and sends them on. It never changes anything on the box, and it deliberately leaves sensitive files like /etc/shadow alone.

Will it slow my server down?

No. It runs briefly, reads a handful of files, compresses a small snapshot, and gets out of the way. It's built to stay light on purpose — making your server less responsive would defeat the whole point of watching it.

How do I remove it?

It's just a script on a schedule. Stop the schedule, delete the script, and it's gone — nothing buried deep in your system, nothing left behind. Trying it costs you nothing and commits you to nothing.

Where is my data stored, and is it private?

CleverUptime is built and run by a German company (arndt.ai GmbH), and your monitoring data is handled under our privacy policy. As above, the script never collects your file contents or secrets in the first place — so there's simply nothing sensitive in what we store.

What's a “monitor”?

One specific check against your server. An ICMP ping is a monitor. Connecting to your web server on port 80 is another. When a monitor fails — say the site answers with an HTTP 500 — CleverUptime lets you know.

I don't really know servers. Do I need this?

Maybe not — if someone else does your hosting, you're covered. But if ssh and root logins sound familiar and you'd like to be sure your box is safe, this is for you. We explain everything as we go, so you don't have to be an expert.

Which Linux distributions does it work on?

The mainstream ones — Debian and Ubuntu, the RHEL family (AlmaLinux, Rocky, CentOS), and most others. The script reads standard Linux interfaces (/proc, /sys, smartctl), so if it's a normal server Linux, it works.

Does it work with Windows servers?

No — CleverUptime is Linux-only.

I'm happy with my current setup. Why switch?

If you run servers professionally and your monitoring is dialled in, you may not need us — you might find CleverUptime too simple. It's built for people who'd rather not become a monitoring expert just to keep one server healthy.

Why does CleverUptime exist?

We've spent two decades setting up and running servers, with good tools and careful habits — and the same handful of problems kept coming back:

  • Keeping an overview is hard. Long projects and short ones, a few servers or many, different people, different hosts, different distros. Wait, was that host a VM or bare metal? SSD or spinning disk? MySQL or MariaDB? And there was always that test VM nobody remembered.
  • Monitoring takes ages to set up. Most frameworks work fine, but tuning the thresholds so you're not buried in alert emails takes real time — and an OS upgrade could send you back to the start.
  • It takes several tools. A port scan here, a certificate-expiry check there, an external uptime probe somewhere else. Doable, but a chore once you have more than a couple of boxes.
  • Mistakes happen. A first-timer can misconfigure a server — but so can a veteran, and will that box still be safe in three years? What was even running on it? (See problem one.)
  • Nobody knows everything. Is a load average of 4.7 fine or alarming? How do you check a RAID 5 array? Even the best admin reaches for the docs.

CleverUptime is the answer to those five, and the goal is to make server monitoring genuinely pleasant:

  • One clean dashboard with every server and what matters about it.
  • Hassle-free setup — start the script and forget it.
  • Checks on the server and active probes from the internet.
  • Monitors that configure themselves to the machine.
  • A public knowledge base of how-tos and best practices behind every alert.

And yes — we run CleverUptime on our own servers, every day.

Still have a question? Ask us — we're happy to help.