Can't get Watchtower Notifications to work. Help? Synology/Docker/Notifiarr

[SawkeeReemo]

GOAL: For now I just want Watchtower to notify me when a container has an update, I don't want to automate the actual updates themselves. I'm using Notifiarr to link this to Discord.

trying to not sound as frustrated as I am haha
I've spent about 3 days trying to figure out how to set up Watchtower on my Synology NAS in a Docker container, and I can't find any guides out there (yet) that give me results that work. My latest attempt follows this guide:
https://drfrankenstein.co.uk/2021/12/31/watchtower-automated-docker-updates-on-a-synology-nas/

It didn't work, so I just started guessing at what I'm supposed to put in the docker-compose file, and this is where I ended up before deciding to give up and just post in here:

(I commented out the command items just as a placeholder. Once I get this to work, I may decide to use some of those.)

Even though you can see my settings above, when it runs, the logs just show:

The last line reads: level=info msg="Session done" Failed=0 Scanned=24 Updated=18 notify=no
Which is not what I'd expect. Yes, there are updates available, but no it did not update 18 items, and yes I have my WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_REPORT=true set. So why did it ignore all that and then not actually do anything anyways, but report that it did?? I'm next-level confused.

Can anyone help please? I'd really appreciate it.

UPDATE 1: I removed the PGID and PUID environmental variables from that compose file and rebuilt the container thinking that might be the problem. Nope, same non-results. I don't know what else to do at this point. Do I need to run the container with "high privileges" or something?

UPDATE 2: Out of frustration, I decided to run the container with high privileges. Same thing happened, no notifications, false job report, me wanting to become Amish. 😜

[piksel]

Hello! Yeah, the updated in the log is a bit misleading and it counts "stale" (containers that could be updated) as well due to it being tied to metrics that does this for legacy reasons ¹. It's not the case for the reports (notifications) though.

I think your problem is related to the generic configuration or payload. You should receive a notification on startup, so that is the easiest way to tell if it works.

The generic notification handler doesn't know what to expect from the target service, so it doesn't report errors very well.

Footnotes

1. Typing it out, it's pretty obvious that this behaviour is really strange and that the log should use the report values instead of the metric ones. ↩

[piksel]

Yeah, the template I linked actually doesn't print .Stale containers. As you might have noticed, the report templates were not created with the monitor-only use case in mind. We should update the docs and default template to include them.
If you only need to monitor, you can just replace .Updated with .Stale in the template and it should do what you want.

I have added a template preview to the docs (but it's still in alpha quality, hence why it's not linked directly from the docs) where you can preview template changes.

[piksel]

I created two templates that should work well with monitor-only and put them here:
#1806

To better help with this scenario for other users, I also added an example configuration in #1807 based on your config (except for the notifiarr notifications which warrants it's own topic).

[SawkeeReemo]

Thank you. I’m still a bit of a newb in this area, like I think I understand some of the mechanics of what that big format array looking thing is, but I’m basically copying and pasting it, then crossing my fingers. Haha know what I mean?

Thanks for sending it! As soon as I get some time to play around, I will drop this in to test.

[SawkeeReemo]

Am I able to use this in combination with WATCHTOWER_LABEL_ENABLE=true or a command list of containers I actually want to update? It'd be great to be able to keep updating containers that aren't critical, while also being notified about ones that have updates available.

UPDATE: Gave it a shot, the answer is no for me so far. This was my compose: https://hastebin.com/share/vahavegevo.yaml

[piksel]

This should actually be possible now (landed in v1.6.0) by using label-take-precedence and putting the
com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.monitor-only="false" label on those containers (docs).

Or if you want to do it the other way around, you can put the label com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.monitor-only="true" on the critical ones and remove WATCHTOWER_MONITOR_ONLY (or set it to false).

[austinwbest]

So i have worked with him some and can confirm he is getting the startup notification but absolutely nothing else when using the monitor only variable. He does get them when containers update as well.

Is it a bug that monitor only does not send anything even with that template being used or is it by design that when only monitoring it does not send notifications?

[SawkeeReemo]

And here is the docker-compose used to create the container for testing:
https://hastebin.com/share/uvokawuqiy.ruby

[Nectulus]

Bump.

I realize it's been a year since last post however I am having an exact same issue with generic notifications to use with Notifiarr. Watchtower is configured in in Monitor Only mode. Just like the original poster I am receiving the initial message when container is starting but nothing after this.

My compose file if this helps.

I found a few other posts here and on Reddit describing this issue. It appears that this only happens in Monitor Only mode which is exactly what I want.

Has this ever been resolved?

Thank you.

[austinwbest]

Sorry bud, can't help. I stopped using it shortly after this and moved to something else. I needed dependable notifications & the ability to set them on a container by container basis as well as check for updates and auto update container by container.

Even though I don't use it anymore if there is something needed notifiarr side I can still make the changes.

Best of luck!

[SawkeeReemo]

Same. I switched to another app by the dev of notifiarr called Dockwatch. Easier to configure and built to work with notifiarr. You should grab that.

[Nectulus]

Just found it and set it up, thank you.