RPi-Monitor, a monitoring daemon that treats the Pi as a small server, not a toy

A daemon, not a script

The positioning in the project documentation is that RPi-Monitor is an application designed to perform real time monitoring of embedded devices, and the difference in that word application is the whole difference in approach. Most Raspberry Pi monitoring is a cron job that writes a temperature to a file, or a script that appends a line to a log. RPi-Monitor is a service with an embedded web server, alert messaging and SNMP integration, which means it is meant to be the thing that watches the machine and tells somebody when something is wrong, not a dashboard you open to look at a graph. The development platform is stated as a Raspberry Pi B, which is a slightly dated reference and a hint about the era this was designed in. The feature list is not exhaustive in the README, which points to a dedicated key features page in the documentation for the details, and the screenshots chapter for what the interface looks like.

The Debian package, and the other distributions

Installation is documented in a getting started chapter, and the packaging is tied to Raspbian. Each release can be installed with a Debian package for Raspbian, and for other, unsupported, distributions such as Gentoo and ArchLinux the documentation points to a separate custom installation chapter. That is the honest shape of the project: a packaged service for the platform it was written for, and a set of instructions for everyone else. The packaging choice has a consequence worth knowing about, which is that a Debian package brings its own assumptions about where files live and how services start, and those assumptions are exactly what the custom installation chapter has to make up for. The documentation also has a usages section with examples of configuration, which is where the real documentation value is, since this is a system whose behaviour is set by files on disk rather than by a web interface.

The Makefile, and the three startup systems it supports

The install target of the Makefile is where the design becomes visible, because the whole installation is a question of which directories to create and which startup system to hook into. Two environment variables configure it: TARGETDIR, which defaults to the root of the filesystem and defines where RPi-Monitor is installed, and STARTUPSYS, which defaults to sysVinit and selects the startup system. The three possible values are sysVinit, upstart and systemd, and the Makefile branches on the choice, copying the init script from the matching directory under src/etc. The installation lays down a specific set of paths: a var/lib/rpimonitor directory for the data, an etc/rpimonitor directory for the configuration, an etc/cron.d directory, an etc/snmp directory, a usr/bin directory for the executables, a usr/share/rpimonitor directory for the shared resources, and the man pages, with the man5 configuration pages installed separately from the man1 page. The default target prints the current values of both variables and the list of options before doing anything, which is a friendly touch for a tool where the install path is the main configuration decision.

Configuration lives in etc/rpimonitor, and cron and SNMP have a place too

The directory layout of the install reveals what the application actually does. There is a var/lib/rpimonitor directory for the data the daemon collects, an etc/rpimonitor directory for its configuration, and an etc/cron.d directory, which tells you that the scheduled parts of the monitoring are done through cron entries rather than an internal scheduler. There is an etc/snmp directory, so the SNMP integration is configured with files, and the usr/share/rpimonitor directory holds the resources shared between the executables. Two man page sets are installed, the man1 page for the command line program and the man5 pages for the configuration files, which is a good sign, because a configuration-file-driven daemon is only usable if the configuration files are documented as carefully as the code. The primary language recorded for the repository is JavaScript, which is consistent with a monitoring front end and a web server rather than with a low-level sampling agent.

The branch model, and what a pull request gets you

The contributing guidance contains a rule that tells you how the project is run. Pull requests performed on the develop branch will be integrated as soon as possible, while pull requests performed on the master branch may only be integrated when a new version is published, or may not be integrated at all. So develop is where the work lands and master is where the released version lives, and a contributor who wants a fast review should target develop. The default branch in the repository is develop, which is consistent with that. The release history explains the other half: the visible tags are v2.12 from 2017-08-26, v2.11 from 2016-08-23 and v2.10 from 2015-01-06, so the tagged releases are old, while the last push to the repository was on 2026-09-23 and the repository is not archived. A project with a decade between tags and a current branch is one where the packaged version and the source have drifted apart.

An organisation, and what the project is now

The README opens with a date and a reason rather than with a feature list. On 2026-07-14, which is also the French national day, the author created a GitHub organisation so volunteers can join the project, contribute and help ensure it keeps going. The phrase worth noticing is helps ensure it keeps going, which is a candid description of a project with a long gap between releases. That reorganisation is the most recent structural change, and it tells you where the maintenance capacity is: shared, volunteer, and organised through a GitHub organisation rather than a single maintainer. The licence is GPLv3, the news feed is the RPi-Experience blog, and the repository itself carries a VERSION file, a docs/ directory with the documentation source, a src/ directory, tools/ and a Makefile.

Where the fit is, and where it is not

The honest read is that RPi-Monitor is a single-machine monitoring service for the small board you own, and it does that job with more structure than a shell script would give you. The web server, the alerting and the SNMP integration are the parts that matter if the device is doing something you care about, and the file-based configuration is a feature rather than a limitation for a machine with one or two services on it. Two limits are structural. The first is that the installation assumes you own the machine and can put a Debian package on it, so a fleet of devices is not the use case, and Gentoo and Arch are called unsupported in the documentation rather than supported. The second is the release gap, and it is the one to check before you rely on the packaged version: the newest tag is from 2017, the branch has moved on, and a project that has needed a GitHub organisation to keep going is not one where you should assume a fresh release is coming. If you need a maintained monitoring stack, compare it against the current alternatives before you commit a device to it.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt RPi-Monitor if you run a Raspberry Pi or similar embedded board in production and want a monitoring daemon with a web interface, alerts and SNMP rather than a collection of ad hoc scripts, and skip it if your device fleet is large, because the design assumes one machine you own and can install a package on. Verify three things before you install it: that your distribution is Raspbian, since each release ships as a Debian package and other distributions are explicitly unsupported and need the custom route; which startup system your image uses, because the installer has separate paths for sysVinit, upstart and systemd; and whether the charts need the extra components, since the development platform is a Raspberry Pi B and the documentation says installation is detailed in the getting started chapter.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. License: GPL-3.0
2. Project website
3. README
4. Releases
5. RPi-Monitor/RPi-Monitor on GitHub