cPanel CheckSrv

Technical summary

This project turns /var/log/chkservd.log into actionable operational output. It aggregates checks across critical services (httpd, mysql, exim, named, imap, etc.), classifies status by check cycle, and reduces triage time on high-volume servers where log size often exceeds 100MB.

Technical origin and rationale

• Bash rewrite of the original checksrv utility by Matthew Harris (HostGator, 2013).
• Practical goals: remove Perl dependency, improve parsing speed, and standardize daily troubleshooting on modern Linux stacks.
• Keeps original intent (human-readable chkservd logs) while adding:

- detailed mode including healthy services, - color-coded output, - system context metrics (PID, uptime, log size), - check quantity control.

Implemented scope

• Efficient parsing of chkservd service-check blocks.
• Multi-mode execution (default, -f, -a, -q N) for NOC/SRE workflows.
• Failure-first analysis without loading the entire file in memory.
• Cron-friendly behavior for alert automation.
• cPanel/WHM-ready operation for real hosting environments.

Runtime commands

# default: recent failures (last 5 checks)
./checksrv.sh

# full mode (healthy + failed) with 2 cycles
./checksrv.sh -f -q 2

# extended scan from latest 5000 lines
./checksrv.sh -f -a

# last 10 cycles
./checksrv.sh -f -q 10

# minimal cron-friendly mode
./checksrv.sh -q 1

Cron integration example

*/5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/checksrv -q 1 || \
  echo "Service failure detected on $(hostname)" | mail -s "Alert chkservd" admin@example.com

Delivered operational diagnostics

• Consolidated service state per Service Check cycle.
• Clear success/failure marks:

- [✓] healthy service - [!] failed service

• check/socket status visibility to separate process-level and socket-level issues.
• Fast cycle-level summary (e.g., all 24 services OK).

Performance optimizations

• Selective parsing with grep, awk, sed, and tail.
• Streaming-oriented processing for very large logs.
• No full-file parse overhead at each run.
• Practical speed gains versus legacy Perl on 100MB+ log files.

Deployment troubleshooting

# verify log file existence and permissions
ls -lah /var/log/chkservd.log

# verify daemon status
systemctl status chkservd || service chkservd status

# ensure execution permission
chmod +x checksrv.sh

# install into PATH
mv checksrv.sh /usr/local/bin/checksrv

Stack and tooling

• Shell Script / Bash
• cPanel/WHM
• Linux
• grep / awk / sed / tail
• cron + local mail

Operational tags

• Bash
• cPanel
• Monitoring
• chkservd

Operational outcome

• Faster service-incident triage on cPanel servers.
• Standardized health-check interpretation for support/on-call operations.
• Better predictability for immediate remediation (service restart, socket validation, dependency checks).