ProxMenux Monitor

Two related actions inside the Settings menu: toggle the proxmenux-monitor.service systemd unit (start / stop and enable / disable in one click), and view its current detailed status. The Monitor exposes a web UI on TCP 8008 for visual host monitoring.

What is ProxMenux Monitor?

ProxMenux Monitor is an integrated web dashboard that provides real-time visibility into your Proxmox infrastructure — accessible from any browser on your network, without needing a terminal.

What it offers

Real-time monitoring of CPU, RAM, disk usage and network traffic.
Overview of running VMs and LXC containers with status indicators.
Login authentication to protect access.
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) with TOTP support.
Reverse proxy support (Nginx / Traefik).
Designed to work across desktop and mobile devices.

Access

Once installed, the dashboard is available at:

http://<your-proxmox-ip>:8008

The Monitor is installed automatically as part of the standard ProxMenux installation and runs as a systemd service (proxmenux-monitor.service) that starts automatically on boot.

Settings options only visible when Monitor is installed

The two menu entries described below only appear in Settings if proxmenux-monitor.service is registered with systemd. If you don't see them, the Monitor wasn't installed (it's optional during ProxMenux install). To add it later, reinstall ProxMenux with the latest version and pick the Monitor option.

Activate / Deactivate

The first menu entry is a single toggle that flips between two states based on whether the service is currently running:

Current state	Menu label shown	Action on confirm
active	Deactivate ProxMenux Monitor	systemctl stop + disable
inactive	Activate ProxMenux Monitor	systemctl enable + start

Each toggle requires an explicit yes/no dialog before running. Activate / Deactivate is symmetric: deactivating stops the service and disables auto-start at boot; activating enables auto-start and starts the service immediately.

Show Monitor Service Status

The second menu entry is read-only. It clears the screen, shows the ProxMenux logo and the title "ProxMenux Monitor Service Verification", then reports:

Service status: active, inactive or not_installed.
Web UI URL (only when active): http://<host_ip>:8008 — derived from hostname -I | awk '{print $1}'.
Detailed systemd output: systemctl status proxmenux-monitor.service --no-pager -l — shows recent log lines, ExecStart, MainPID, etc.

Manual equivalents

From any shell:

systemctl status proxmenux-monitor.service       # detailed status
systemctl is-active proxmenux-monitor.service    # one-word status
systemctl enable --now proxmenux-monitor.service # enable + start
systemctl disable --now proxmenux-monitor.service # stop + disable
journalctl -u proxmenux-monitor.service -f       # follow live logs

Reset ProxMenux Monitor Password

Recovery path for the operator who lost the dashboard password (or 2FA device). The option only appears when the Monitor is installed on the host. Selecting it:

Asks for confirmation with a yes/no dialog — the action is destructive for the login credentials.
Backs up the existing /root/.config/proxmenux-monitor/auth.json to auth.json.bak-<UTC timestamp> (mode 0600) so the previous state can be restored manually if the reset was a mistake.
Stops the proxmenux-monitor service so the on-disk edit can't race with an in-flight login.
Clears the identity fields in auth.json: enabled=false, configured=false, empties username, password_hash, totp_secret and the backup codes array.
Preserves the jwt_secret and the registered api_tokens / revoked_tokens — so long-lived API tokens used by Home Assistant or other scripts continue to authenticate after the reset.
Restarts the service. The next visit to http://<host>:8008 shows the first-launch setup wizard so a fresh admin account can be created.

What survives the reset, what doesn't

Wiped: username, password hash, 2FA TOTP secret, backup codes. Preserved: jwt_secret, api_tokens metadata, revoked_tokens list. If you actively want to also invalidate every existing API token (full clean slate), delete auth.json manually instead of using this menu option — the next start of the service regenerates the JWT secret and everything else from scratch.

Physical-host access is the trust anchor

This reset path requires root shell on the host. Anyone who can run the menu command as root already controls the box, so giving them password recovery is not a privilege escalation — it's consistent with how every other admin tool on Proxmox works. The corollary: the Monitor login won't protect anything from someone you've already let into the Proxmox shell.

See also Monitor → Access & Auth → Recovering a lost password for the same flow described from the dashboard side, plus the wider context on how passwords are hashed and how the JWT secret is generated.

Files involved

/etc/systemd/system/proxmenux-monitor.service       # systemd unit
/root/.config/proxmenux-monitor/                    # runtime config dir
/var/log/proxmenux-auth.log                         # Flask app auth log
                                                    # (read by Fail2Ban [proxmenux] jail)

Troubleshooting

Both menu options are missing

The Monitor isn't registered with systemd. Confirm with systemctl list-unit-files | grep proxmenux-monitor — if there's no output, reinstall ProxMenux from the official installer with the latest version and pick the Monitor option during install.

Service activated but the URL is unreachable

The Settings status output gives you the IP. Confirm:

ss -tlnp | grep 8008                # is anything listening?
journalctl -u proxmenux-monitor -n 100 --no-pager  # recent errors
curl -sI http://localhost:8008      # local reachability

If localhost works but external doesn't, check your host firewall (pve-firewall or nftables) for inbound TCP 8008.

Activated the service but it stops itself a few seconds later

Most often a port conflict (something else on 8008) or a dependency check failing. The journal will say which: journalctl -u proxmenux-monitor.service -b.

Fail2Ban — the [proxmenux] jail protects the Monitor on TCP 8008.
Settings overview.

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Settings ProxMenux

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