Alerts and email notifications
The “Alerts” card on the “Monitoring” page: severity levels, statuses and preferences for alert emails.
On this page
The “Alerts” card is at the top of the “Monitoring” page in the app.blackbox.md panel (app.blackbox.md/monitoring, sidebar → “Infrastructure” → “Monitoring”). It shows the problems the BLACKBOX monitoring system has detected on your servers in the last 30 days. This is also where you choose when you get an email about a new alert.
Available to: any customer signed in to the app.blackbox.md panel. Alerts appear only for servers you own (the ones ordered from your blackbox.md account).
The blackbox.md website is available in Romanian and Russian; this article quotes the Romanian labels with their English meaning.
Important Alerts appear only for servers that have monitoring rules set up, for example servers with the “Monitoring 24/7” add-on service. For other servers, the card stays empty, even if the server has a problem. How to request the service: Add-on services for your server.
How to open the “Alerts” card
- Open the panel from blackbox.md: “Contul meu” (My account) → “Panou de administrare” (Admin panel). Details: Opening the app.blackbox.md panel from your account.
- In the sidebar, click “Monitoring” (in the “Infrastructure” section).
- The “Alerts” card is the first one below the page title. While the list is loading, it shows “Loading alerts…”.
- The list does not update by itself. To see new alerts, click “Refresh” to the right of the “Alerts” title (while it loads, the button shows “Refreshing…”).
The “Refresh” button next to the page title updates only the server table, not the list of alerts. The rest of the page is described in The “Monitoring” page.
If there have been no alerts in the last 30 days, the card shows “No alerts in the last 30 days.”
What the table shows
The table lists the alerts that started in the last 30 days. “Firing” alerts come first, then “Resolved” ones. Within each group, they are sorted from newest to oldest.
| Column | What it contains |
|---|---|
| “Alert” | The alert name and, below it, a short description of the problem, if there is one |
| “Server” | The server's original name, not the private name you set (Renaming a server (private name)). “—” means the name is not available |
| “Severity” | How serious the problem is (see the table below) |
| “Status” | “Firing” or “Resolved” |
| “Started” | How long ago the problem started: “just now”, “5m ago”, “3h ago”, “2d ago”. Hover over the value to see the exact date and time (in a technical format, in UTC) |
Each occurrence of a problem is a separate row: if the same alert is resolved and then comes back, a new row appears in the table.
Severity levels
| Severity | Color | |
|---|---|---|
| “Critical” | red | sent whatever “Minimum severity” you choose |
| “Warning” | yellow | sent if “Minimum severity” is “Warning” (the default) or “Info” |
| “Info” | blue | sent only if “Minimum severity” is “Info” |
| “Unknown” | gray | never sent |
“Unknown” means the alert has no severity level. It appears in the table, but it does not trigger an email.
Statuses
| Status | Color | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| “Firing” | red | The problem is ongoing |
| “Resolved” | green | The monitoring system reported that the problem has gone away. You don't get an email when an alert is resolved |
How to set up alert emails
Below the table is the “Notification preferences” block. The settings apply to your whole account (all your servers) and affect the emails sent after you save them.
| Item | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| The “Email me when a new alert fires” checkbox | Checked: you get an email about new alerts. Unchecked: you get no email, but alerts still appear in the panel | checked |
| The “Minimum severity” list | “Info”, “Warning” or “Critical”: the level from which you get emails | “Warning” |
| The “Save” button | Saves both settings | — |
- In the “Alerts” card, find the “Notification preferences” block.
- Check or uncheck “Email me when a new alert fires”.
- Choose the level in the “Minimum severity” list.
- Click “Save”. While your settings are being saved, the button shows “Saving…”.
- The panel does not show a confirmation message. If no error message appears above the settings, your preferences have been saved.
The preferences do not change which alerts you see in the table: all of them appear there, whatever their severity.
The alert email
The email comes from the sender “BlackBox” and goes to the email address of your blackbox.md account. You cannot set a different address in the panel.
- Subject: “[BlackBox] Alertă — …” ([BlackBox] Alert — …), where “…” is the alert name, as shown in the “Alert” column.
- Content: the server name (if available), “Alertă:” (Alert:) with the alert name, “Severitate:” (Severity:) with the level in technical form (
critical,warningorinfo), the problem description, “Pornit:” (Started:) with the start date and time (in a technical format), and where to find alerts in the panel (“Monitoring → Alerte”, meaning Monitoring → Alerts). In the English panel, this is “Monitoring” → “Alerts”. - The link at the end leads to blackbox.md. From there, open the panel, then “Monitoring”.
You get the email only if all of these conditions are met:
- the alert is “Firing” (nothing is sent when it is resolved);
- the “Email me when a new alert fires” checkbox is checked;
- the alert's severity is at least the level set in “Minimum severity” (“Unknown” alerts never send an email);
- you have not already received an email about the same alert in the last 6 hours.
Note The alert email is always in Romanian, whatever language you chose on the website or in the panel. Details: Language of the website, the panel and emails.
All the emails BLACKBOX sends: Emails you receive from BLACKBOX.
Error messages
If the list or the settings cannot be loaded or saved, a message appears on a red background, either above the list of alerts or above the settings. Most of the time, the panel shows the technical text it received from the server (usually in English) instead of the message in the table below.
| Message | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| “Failed to load alerts” or a technical message above the list | The list of alerts did not load. In this case, the text “No alerts in the last 30 days.” below the message is not accurate | Click “Refresh”. If it happens again, reload the page |
| “Failed to load preferences” or a technical message above the settings | Your email settings did not load: the checkbox and the list show the default values, not your saved ones | Reload the page before you click “Save” |
| “Failed to save preferences” or a technical message after “Save” | Your settings were not saved | Try again. If it happens again, write to us |
alerts_ingest_disabled (after “Save”) |
The alerts feature is temporarily unavailable. In the meantime, the card shows “No alerts in the last 30 days.” | Come back later |
| “Unauthorized” | Your panel session has expired (a session lasts 8 hours after you sign in) | Reload the page and enter the panel again from blackbox.md |
All panel errors: Panel error messages and what they mean.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the “Alerts” card empty? Either there have been no alerts in the last 30 days, or your servers have no monitoring rules set up (for example, they don't have the “Monitoring 24/7” service), or the feature is temporarily unavailable. If you want alerts for a server, write to us: How to contact BLACKBOX support.
Do I see alerts for the servers of a company that BLACKBOX gave me access to? No. The card shows only alerts for servers you owned at the moment the alert appeared. The company's servers appear in the table on the “Monitoring” page with the “Managed by BlackBox” badge, but their alerts do not reach the card.
Can I turn off emails for just one server? No. “Notification preferences” apply to all the servers in your account.
The problem is still there. Will I get another email? For the same alert, you get at most one email every 6 hours, even if the alert is resolved and comes back in the meantime. Keep an eye on the status in the panel and click “Refresh”.
What should I do when I get an alert? Connect to the server over SSH and check its load: Diagnosing server load (CPU, RAM, disk, network). If the disk is full: The server's disk is full. If you can't find the cause, write to us and include the alert name and the server name.
How long are alerts kept? The alert history is kept for 90 days, but the card shows only alerts that started in the last 30 days. Alerts for a deleted server stay in the card until 30 days have passed since they started.