MYKOS dashboard UI guide

Documentation index

Use this guide to find a feature, identify an icon, and understand what happens when you select a control. It describes the dashboard through the peer compact UI and peer-map updates (hotfix188). Controls depend on your role, host configuration, available images, and resource state. Hover over an icon for its action name; keyboard users can move between controls with Tab and activate buttons with Enter or Space.

Contents

• Start here
• Page layout and navigation
• Host monitoring and graph
• Host buttons
• Peer hosts
• OS panes and container rows
• Container button reference
• Images and base sessions
• Snapshots
• VPN and network information
• rsync backup accounts
• Repositories
• Notes
• Appearance and footer controls
• Common workflows
• Messages and troubleshooting

Start here

Open /mykos/ on your MYKOS host and sign in with your browser account. The login page also offers theme, API, and Docs links. Browser accounts, API keys, backup SSH accounts, and guest OS credentials are separate identities.

A standard user can inspect monitoring and permitted inventories. Administrators also receive management controls; terminal-dependent actions require the host to enable browser terminals. Some notes controls are restricted to the designated operator. Missing buttons can therefore be expected. See Identity management. Browser account and API-key creation are host command-line operations, not buttons in this dashboard.

Check the target before acting: the local Host pane, an embedded peer Host pane, a prepared image row, an eight-digit container ID, and a saved snapshot represent different resources. A terminal on Host operates the server; a terminal on a container operates that instance. A peer's terminal operates that peer.

Page layout and navigation

Panes appear automatically when relevant resources or image choices are present. The footer's pane preview control can reveal additional panes with Sample rows. Sample rows are examples with disabled actions; they are not deployed containers, snapshots, backups, or repositories. Available preview families also depend on access.

The screen examples gallery illustrates the dashboard and snapshot workflows using example data. Those pictures are illustrative and may predate the latest peer layout; the control descriptions here cover that layout.

Host monitoring and graph

Select a metric label to hide or show its series. This changes only the graph, not the server. Labels follow the selected time window; return to Live for the latest available readings.

The graph shows a five-minute window. Drag the history slider left to inspect older windows within the retained 30 minutes; select Live to return to now. Hover or focus the graph to inspect readings. Horizontal scrolling, including Shift plus the mouse wheel, moves through history. Resource readings are marked high at 75% and critical at 90%. Count bars have their own scales.

Each peer keeps independent live performance data. Its embedded pane shows an unlabeled performance graph filling the pane behind its host status and action buttons, with no metric labels, table-heading labels, or past-view slider. The small gray hardware and network information line is an outside footer below the peer pane. Open the full node view to use the labeled graph, metric visibility controls, and history slider. With the map background on, embedded peer panes share its translucent appearance. Turning the map off restores their normal pane fill. The hardware line reports available machine/CPU information and one Memory label followed by installed memory type, configured speed, and DIMM capacity. Missing hardware values are omitted. This installed capacity differs from the live used-memory value in the row.

Host buttons

The Host table columns are Host, Status, Version, IP, Peer, Uptime, Memory, Actions. Host-specific controls appear before Console Log, root terminal, and reboot on the right. A diagnostic expands below the row; selecting the same control again, or its Close button, closes it.

Peer hosts

A peer is another MYKOS server paired for reciprocal administrator control over an IKEv2 VPN. Read the hostname and address before using any of its controls. A disconnected peer displays Offline and loses its actionable embedded pane. Connected peers also have a labeled background-map box. A dashed green line connects the local host to a peer when both have distinct saved coordinates. Peers without coordinates have a Connected box marked Location unavailable; no geographic position or line is invented. Boxes and lines disappear when the peer disconnects or its status becomes unavailable.

The compact peer action order is flower, unlink, plus, followed by any site VPN removal control and then the common log, terminal, and reboot controls.

To pair hosts, select the local Peer + or Add another peer, enter both reachable IPv4 addresses, and select Create invitation. Copy the private invitation into the other host's dialog and select Accept and connect within 15 minutes. Close dismisses the dialog. Invitations grant reciprocal admin control and must stay private. Full prerequisites, certificate handling, and removal behavior are in Peer hosts.

Personal, pane, and shared customer notes are not forwarded through peers. Browser/API-key administration and further peer management also remain local.

OS panes and container rows

An image is a prepared OS and any startup state required to launch it. A container is a particular ID-specific instance with its own writable state, IP, and hostname. VM-backed guests also run within MYKOS-managed containers. A snapshot saves an instance at a point in time.

At the top of an OS pane, administrators can enter an eight-digit ID, choose an available OS image, and select the blue + (Start). This creates/starts an ID-specific instance from that image after confirmation. It does not install a missing OS image. Unavailable images cannot be selected. Use the row's green triangle to restart an existing stopped persistent container.

For eligible native starts with an existing backup, MYKOS separately asks whether to mount the original backup folders read/write. Accepting means changes inside the container can change those backup files.

Expanded details include the image, OS, resources, addresses, and monitoring freshness. Unknown or stale data is not proof that a container stopped.

Container button reference

A saved native Linux memory snapshot currently requires its original container for restore. Keeping that snapshot does not make deleting its original container safe for a later restore. Legacy auto-remove containers must be converted to persistent storage before guarded start/stop/snapshot actions become available.

Images and base sessions

Image/build rows share OS panes with container rows. Their Status can show Queued, Installing, Preparing, Capturing, Failed, or Image. A prepared image displays its size and production time. A build still installing or capturing is not a ready image, even if its console is usable.

Base edits must be captured before closing the editing session or logging out. A base-session disconnect queues a reset and discards uncaptured edits. To keep changes, leave the base session connected, open the host's sudo mykos text menu in a separate session, select f. Capture image, enter the OS, confirm, and wait for completion. Capture is a text-menu operation; there is no dashboard Capture button. Existing ID-specific instances keep their existing state.

Idle generic bases can stop after five minutes without an active session. A prepared image remains available for new instances even when its generic base is stopped. Do not confuse a stopped base with a missing image.

To build a missing image, use c. Build image in the host text menu and the correct OS identifier. See Image builds for supported native and VM types, media requirements, capture behavior, and recovery.

The small gray hardware line below the Host table includes measured internet Download and Upload speeds in Mbps when an official Ookla result is available. The collector measures twice daily, at midnight and noon Central, with the dev peer offset by 30 seconds. Hover over the line for the measurement time; failed or older results carry (stale). These measurements are separate from current network traffic shown on the graphs.

Snapshots

The Snapshots pane groups saved states by container. Choose the desired capture in its date/time selector before selecting an action. The displayed capture time and disk size follow that selection.

Desktop previews resume saved RAM and disks. Native Linux previews open the saved filesystem in an isolated shell; they do not resume captured RAM or services. Preview networking is blocked, changes are discarded on close, and sessions have a 30-minute maximum. Close preview explicitly ends the session. Previews consume capacity within the host's 50 running-instance/preview limit.

See Snapshot Preview for storage and isolation details.

VPN and network information

Select a container IP address to see its addresses, interface, networks, gateway, own VPN status, shared gateway, and default tunnel. Show connected guests expands or reduces the topology drawing. Solid green edges indicate a reported established SA; dashed gray edges are unconfirmed. Shared-network edges show membership, not a successful reachability test. A site SA alone does not prove full-tunnel internet connectivity.

Selecting an Up VPN status opens IPsec diagnostics. The setup/removal plus and trash controls open interactive workflows; follow their prompts and check the target before accepting. Native direct VPNs, shared gateways, host site VPNs, and MYKOS peer VPNs serve different purposes. See Networking. The geographic background represents saved locations, not a packet-path test.

rsync backup accounts

The rsync pane lists backup account ID, application type, OS, used disk, last modification, and subscriber state. These are backup SSH accounts, not browser login accounts. The inline creation controls take an eight-digit ID and the client SSH public key, then Create account.

Account creation does not prove that a fresh rsync backup has run. Consult the last-modified and storage values, then verify the intended backup separately.

Repositories

The Repos pane shows repository name, disk use, last modification, and latest RPM. Select a repository name to browse its published directory in another tab. A configured remote source can make this pane read-only, with management buttons hidden; its Server label identifies the source.

The status line reports storage, Apache state, sync state, and collection time. Enabling Apache is different from starting a repository sync.

Notes

Several small icons resemble one another. Their location and tooltip identify the kind of notes they open; a document in an Actions row can instead be a log or graphical console.

Save writes the edited text. Reload retrieves the server version and asks before discarding unsaved edits. Close dismisses the dialog and asks before discarding unsaved text. Saving checks the revision so a concurrent edit is not silently overwritten. If a conflict occurs, keep a private copy of your pending text before reloading, then reconcile and save again.

On this installation, the authorized hourly maintenance workflow uses personal and dashboard pane notes as requests. Saving a note does not itself execute a change. Shared customer notes and the documentation's historical operator notes are separate from that work list. Notes remain host-local and are excluded from peer forwarding and public documentation/release content.

Appearance and footer controls

Appearance and preview preferences are remembered in the browser when local storage is available. Hover to distinguish the similar leaf icons.

Common workflows

Inspect an instance

1. Use the header's OS link to reach its pane.
2. Select the ID row to inspect details; select IP for topology or Memory for processes.
3. Open Console Log for native logs, or HTTP graphical desktop for an interactive desktop.
4. Use the terminal only when you intend to issue commands to that instance.

Start a new instance or restart an existing one

1. For a new instance, enter an unused eight-digit ID and select a prepared image.
2. Select the pane's blue + (Start); read any backup-mount prompt, then confirm.
3. Wait for the queued/running operation to finish and inspect the resulting row.
4. For an existing stopped persistent instance, use its green Start container triangle instead.

Save and inspect a point in time

1. On a running persistent instance, select the camera and confirm.
2. Wait for snapshot completion; find the ID in Snapshots and select its capture time.
3. Use the green monitor for a separate preview, then Close preview when finished.
4. Use Restore only when you intend to replace the original instance's current state.

Operate another MYKOS host

1. Locate its compact Host pane and verify the hostname/IP.
2. Use its Host controls for host diagnostics or terminal access.
3. Select its small flower to open the full node for that host's guests and snapshots.
4. Recheck the target name before lifecycle or destructive actions.

Messages and troubleshooting

For deeper procedures, use Images, Desktops and snapshots, Networking, Peers, and Installation/recovery.

Pane status summaries appear beside their pane labels after a middle dot, including live counts, refresh times and errors. They remain gray and update in place; the ID/start controls and table begin below the heading without a separate status row.