System Messages

What you see

URL: /system/messages

The system messages page shows health check results detected by PodWarden's periodic infrastructure audit. PodWarden automatically checks for data inconsistencies between its database and your live infrastructure every 15 minutes.

A bell icon in the top navigation bar shows the number of unread messages. The badge color reflects the highest severity:

Click the bell to open the system messages page.

Health checks

PodWarden runs these checks automatically:

Node naming

Cluster membership

Deployments

Hosts

Ingress Drift

Pod Health

Infrastructure

Using the page

Filtering

• Severity chips at the top toggle which severity levels are shown
• Category dropdown filters by check category (node naming, cluster, deployments, hosts, ingress drift, pod health, infrastructure, system apps)
• Status toggle switches between active issues, resolved issues, or all
• Click a message row to expand and see full details and diagnostic data

Object links

When you expand a message, clickable links appear that take you directly to the affected object's detail page. For example, a "Host unreachable" message links to that host's detail page, and a "DNS mismatch" message links to the Network page. Links are shown for hosts, clusters, deployments, and network resources when the relevant object exists.

Actions

• Mark as read — dismisses the notification badge for you (other users still see it as unread)
• Mark all read — marks all active messages as read
• Run check (admin only) — triggers an immediate health check instead of waiting for the next cycle
• Delete (admin only) — permanently removes a message

Suppressing messages

Some alerts are expected and intentional — for example, an "Unmanaged IngressRoute" for a route you created directly via kubectl, or an "Unknown K8s node" for a node you provisioned outside of PodWarden. These are not bugs; they are known deviations you have chosen to accept. Suppressing them keeps your message list focused on issues that actually need attention.

To suppress a message, click the eye-slash icon (Suppress button) on any message row. The message is immediately hidden from the main list and will not trigger email notifications.

To view suppressed messages, enable the "Show suppressed" toggle in the page header. Suppressed messages reappear dimmed with a "Suppressed" badge so they are visually distinct from active issues.

To unsuppress a message, enable the "Show suppressed" toggle, then click the eye icon (Unsuppress button) on the message you want to restore. The message returns to the normal active list.

Suppression is permanent until you explicitly unsuppress — health check cycles do not clear or reset suppression state. Suppressed messages are also excluded from the notification digest, so re-enabling email notifications will not retroactively send alerts for them.

Auto-resolution

When a previously detected issue is no longer found during a health check (e.g., you fixed a node name mismatch), the message is automatically marked as resolved. Resolved messages are cleaned up after 7 days.

When a previously detected issue disappears, PodWarden doesn't resolve it immediately. Instead, it waits for multiple consecutive clean check cycles (default: 2, configurable in Settings) before marking it resolved. This prevents noisy alerts from pods that briefly recover before crashing again.

Drift Detection Dashboard

URL: /apps/drift-detection

PodWarden provides a dedicated dashboard for drift detection issues, accessible from the navigation menu. The dashboard shows:

• Summary cards — count of active issues by severity (critical, error, warning, info)
• Issues table — all active drift issues with severity, category, title, and time since detection
• Action buttons:
  • Run Check Now — trigger an immediate health check without waiting for the next cycle
  • Clear Resolved — delete all resolved drift messages

Each issue in the table links to the relevant PodWarden page where you can investigate and fix it.

Configuration

Drift detection settings are in Settings → Drift Detection:

Email notifications

PodWarden can send email alerts when new infrastructure issues are detected. Configure this in Settings → System Config → Notifications.

Emails are sent as a digest — one email per health check cycle containing all newly detected issues. Previously known issues do not re-trigger emails. If an issue resolves and later reappears, it is treated as new.

Email delivery uses the SMTP settings configured in the same Settings page. SMTP must be configured and working for email notifications to function.