Notifications

LXC AutoScale can send notifications on scaling events to one or more endpoints. Notifications are dispatched asynchronously and never block the scaling loop.

Supported channels

Email (SMTP)

smtp_server: 'smtp.example.com'
smtp_port: 587
smtp_username: 'your-username'
smtp_password: '${LXC_AUTOSCALE_SMTP_PASSWORD}'
smtp_from: 'lxc-autoscale@yourdomain.com'
smtp_to:
  - 'admin@yourdomain.com'
  - 'alerts@yourdomain.com'

The daemon connects via STARTTLS. Authentication is required.

Gotify

gotify_url: 'http://gotify-host'
gotify_token: '${LXC_AUTOSCALE_GOTIFY_TOKEN}'

Uptime Kuma

uptime_kuma_webhook_url: 'http://uptime-kuma-host:3001/api/push/YOUR_PUSH_ID?status=up&msg=OK&ping='

Configuration

Add the notification settings to the DEFAULT section of /etc/lxc_autoscale/lxc_autoscale.yaml. You can enable one, multiple, or all channels. Unconfigured channels are silently skipped.

Secrets can be injected via environment variables using ${VAR} syntax in the YAML file, or via direct env overrides:

Environment variable	Overrides
LXC_AUTOSCALE_SMTP_PASSWORD	smtp_password
LXC_AUTOSCALE_GOTIFY_TOKEN	gotify_token
LXC_AUTOSCALE_UPTIME_KUMA_WEBHOOK	uptime_kuma_webhook_url

Async dispatch

All notifications are sent in a background thread using asyncio.to_thread. This means:

• The scaling loop is never blocked by slow SMTP servers or HTTP endpoints.
• If a notification takes 5 seconds to deliver, the daemon continues scaling other containers without waiting.
• HTTP notifiers (Gotify, Uptime Kuma) reuse a shared requests.Session with connection pooling for efficient keep-alive.

Failure backoff

If a notification channel fails repeatedly, the daemon suppresses it to avoid wasting time on a broken endpoint.

Parameter	Value	Behavior
Failure threshold	3	After 3 consecutive failures, the channel is suppressed.
Backoff period	10 cycles	The channel is skipped for 10 notification attempts.
Retry	Automatic	After the backoff period, the channel is retried. If it succeeds, the failure counter resets to zero.

A warning is logged when a channel enters backoff:

GotifyNotification: 3 consecutive failures, backing off

This prevents a single broken SMTP server or unreachable Gotify instance from stalling or spamming the daemon logs.