No that we have quite a few services up and running via our Build your own Homelab series, we are going to need a more ways of knowing when something goes wrong. We have Prometheus monitoring some nodes and we have Grafana that gives us a visual interface to monitor our probes. We will also be adding a Uptime Kuma service soon where we will be able to monitor our services. But monitoring is one thing if if aren’t notified that there is an issue. So today we are going to add our own notifying service called ntfy(pronounced notify). (Check out our full article on ntfy)
Step 1: Get the install command
There are a few ways of installing ntfy, most notably as a docker container. We have a Docker LXC running as well as a Docker VM and we have Portainer running for deployment, so this approach should be fairly easy. However, our personal choice is to have it running as a separate LXC container because we are seeing ntfy as a primary and important service that needs to have a high priority and dedicated resources. So again, we are going to get help from helper-scripts.com. Once on the site, search for ntfy, there should only eb one result, an LXC Containter. Click on it to get the install command and instructions.
Step 2: Create a new LXC Container with ntfy
Open a new browser window and navigate to your Proxmox installation address. Log in and expand Datcenter in the left navigation window, then select the Proxmox node you wish to install nfty on. In the middle navigation window click on 
. Paste the install command from the first step and press enter.
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/ntfy.sh)"A window will pop up in the in main window confirming that you want to install a new ntfy LXC Container, select Yes. We will then be prompted if we want to use default settings, advanced settings or some other options. In our case, the Default settings is fine so we will select that and continue. If you have multiple storage locations in your Proxmox, you will be prompted to select the install location. After this, installation will start and should complete fairly quickly.
Once done you will be shown the IP address of the container where you are able to access ntfy. A good idea now would be to assign a dedicated IP address on your router for this machine so that we get the same IP every time it starts up.
Step 3: Configure ntfy
Open your browser to the indicated IP address. Here you will be able to create topics and send test messages. First, subscribe to a topic to create that topic for notifications. In the left navigation menu, the last option is Subscribe to topic. Click that and create a new topic, anything you want. Once done, this topic will now be shown in the left navigation menu under Subscribed Topics. To test this, click on Publish notification and create a test notification. Once sent, you will see it in the feed. If this works, we need to get it set up on our phone for delivery.
Step 4: Set up ntfy on your phone
Get the ntfy app from your smartphone’s app store: Google Play or Apple Store. Once installed, open the app where you will be shown a screen telling you that you have no subscriptions. That is absolutely correct. But first, we need to add our server from where we are receiving subscriptions. For that, click on settings, and scroll down to Default Server under the General section. Open it and enter the IP address of the ntfy server, including the http:// at the start. In our case:
http://192.168.1.34Once done, hit the Add Subscription and add the test channel sub, which will bring in the previous test messages sent. Easy as that!
Conclusion
This will only work if you are on the same local network as your ntfy server, but in the next article, we will get it sorted to get done from outside of the network as well. Stay