vpp-maglev

Health checker, gRPC control plane, CLI, and web dashboard for the VPP lb (load-balancer) plugin. Runs as a set of three binaries under one Debian package:

• maglevd — the long-running health-checker daemon. Probes backends (HTTP, TCP, ICMP), tracks their aggregate state, programs the VPP dataplane via the lb plugin binary API, and exposes everything over a gRPC API + Prometheus /metrics endpoint.
• maglevc — the interactive CLI client. Tab-completing shell with inline help; also runs one-shot commands for scripting.
• maglevd-frontend — optional web dashboard. One binary with the SolidJS SPA embedded via //go:embed; connects to one or more maglevds over gRPC and serves a live HTTP view (read-only /view/ and optional basic-auth /admin/).

Build and install

make          # builds build/<arch>/{maglevd,maglevc,maglevd-frontend}
make test     # runs all tests
make pkg-deb  # creates a Debian package for amd64 and arm64

Requires Go 1.25+ and (for make proto) protoc with protoc-gen-go and protoc-gen-go-grpc. The SolidJS bundle under cmd/frontend/web/ is built automatically via make through the maglevd-frontend-web target, which needs npm.

Produces vpp-maglev_<version>_amd64.deb and vpp-maglev_<version>_arm64.deb in the build/ directory by cross-compiling with GOOS=linux GOARCH=<arch>. Requires dpkg-deb (available on any Debian/Ubuntu host). The installed binaries report the exact git commit via maglevd --version (and similarly for maglevc / maglevd-frontend).

Running

After installing, maglevd is enabled automatically but maglevd-frontend is not — it's opt-in, so the web dashboard doesn't surprise anyone who just wanted the daemon:

# edit /etc/vpp-maglev/maglev.yaml, then:
systemctl enable --now vpp-maglev

# optional: web dashboard. Edit /etc/default/vpp-maglev to set
# MAGLEV_FRONTEND_ARGS and (optionally) MAGLEV_FRONTEND_USER /
# MAGLEV_FRONTEND_PASSWORD for /admin/ access, then:
systemctl enable --now vpp-maglev-frontend

Or run the components by hand:

maglevd --config /etc/vpp-maglev/maglev.yaml --grpc-addr :9090
maglevd --version                         # print version and exit

maglevc --server localhost:9090           # interactive shell
maglevc show frontends                    # one-shot
maglevc -color=false show backends        # one-shot, no ANSI color
maglevc set backend nginx0-ams pause

maglevd-frontend -server localhost:9090 -listen :8080

Send SIGHUP to maglevd to reload config without restarting. maglevd requires CAP_NET_RAW for ICMP health checks.

Every flag on every binary also has an environment-variable equivalent (e.g. MAGLEV_CONFIG, MAGLEV_GRPC_ADDR, MAGLEV_SERVERS, MAGLEV_LISTEN, MAGLEV_LOG_LEVEL) so all three programs can be driven entirely via env in containerized deployments.

Documentation

• A minimal configuration file in debian/maglev.yaml shows every knob.
• docs/user-guide.md — flags, signals, and maglevc command reference.
• docs/config-guide.md — full YAML reference.
• docs/healthchecks.md — health state machine, probe scheduling, rise/fall semantics.
• Manpages: maglevd(8), maglevc(1), maglevd-frontend(8).

Docker

docker build -t maglevd .
docker run --cap-add NET_RAW -v /etc/vpp-maglev:/etc/vpp-maglev maglevd