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Docs · Machines

Your machines

Machines

What the overview and a machine’s page tell you, how the sidebar is organized, and what each state means.

Every computer you add is a machine in Muxen: a Mac on your desk, a Linux server, a Windows PC, a cloud droplet, or a VM running on one of them. Muxen checks each one now and then and shows how it’s doing in three places: the overview, the machine’s own page, and the sidebar.

The overview

The overview (⌃1) has a card for each machine: what’s running on it (agent sessions, its desktop, its runners), and its CPU, memory and free disk. Click a card to open the machine.

Above the cards, a short list says what needs a look: a runner that stopped, a job no runner can take, a disk running low, a GitHub scope Muxen can’t read. Each item has a button that goes where you can fix it. Machines that can’t be reached aren’t repeated there: their cards already say so, and why.

The overview: a heads-up list of what needs a look, then a card for each machine with its sessions, runners, CPU, memory and disk. The overview: a heads-up list of what needs a look, then a card for each machine with its sessions, runners, CPU, memory and disk.
sandbox and win-test are VMs: a container on Forge and a Windows VM on Beacon.

A machine’s page

Open a machine from the sidebar, a card, or ⌘P. From the top:

  • Its header: how Muxen reaches it, its system, and buttons for a new session, its desktop, logs, services, installing a runner and copying files.
  • CPU, memory, disk and uptime, from the last check (and its GPU when it has one).
  • Runs here: the VMs and containers that run on it, with Start and Stop. See VMs on your machines.
  • Agent sessions running there, and which agent CLIs it has.
  • Servers: what’s listening, web servers first. See Servers and ports.
  • Connection: over ssh or direct, which network, and how fast. See Connections.
  • Git: whether commits and pushes work there, with a button to set up your GitHub identity.
  • Runners, Diagnostics (what a check found worth knowing) and Agent workspaces.
A machine's header: its name, online state, host, system and buttons, then cards for CPU, memory, disk and uptime. A machine's header: its name, online state, host, system and buttons, then cards for CPU, memory, disk and uptime.
The top of a machine’s page: what it is, how it’s doing, and what you can do with it.

The sidebar lists every machine, and under each one what’s open on it: its agent sessions, its desktop, its logs and services pages, ports you opened, and its runners. Click the arrow beside a machine to fold it.

  • Favorites come first. Star a machine on its page or in its right-click menu.
  • ⌘1 to ⌘9 go to the first nine machines, in the sidebar’s order. Hold ⌘ to see which is which. Settings › Keyboard changes the modifier, or turns them off.
  • VMs sit under their machine. A VM or container that runs on another of your machines is indented under it, with a line from its host, and its subtitle says so (“Windows 11 · VM”).
  • ⌘F searches machines and sessions; the list shows only what matches.

What each state means

A machine’s dot and subtitle say how it is. Gray means nothing’s wrong; amber or red means something needs fixing.

  • Online: the last check reached it.
  • Offline: it didn’t answer. It’s shut down, asleep or off the network, and there’s nothing to fix. Its page says when it was last seen, and offers Wake when Muxen knows its network card.
  • Can’t connect: it answered, but ssh didn’t work. The subtitle gives the reason in a few words (“Not accepting ssh”, “ssh key not accepted”, “Host key changed”), and its page says what to do. See Troubleshooting.
  • Disconnected: you disconnected it on purpose. Muxen leaves it alone until you connect it again; its sessions keep running there.
  • Installing, Stopped, “Beacon is offline”: a VM that’s still setting itself up, whose container is stopped, or whose host is off.
  • Powered off: a cloud machine you powered off. It’s still billed.
An offline machine's page: Harbor is offline, shut down, asleep, or off the network, with Wake and Try again. An offline machine's page: Harbor is offline, shut down, asleep, or off the network, with Wake and Try again.
An offline Mac: Wake sends a Wake on LAN signal, Try again checks it now.

Waking a machine

Wake sends a Wake on LAN signal from this computer, and from your other online machines on the same network (so it works when you’re away from home too). It works once Muxen has seen the machine’s network card while it was on, and when the machine is set up to wake that way. Muxen checks it again after 20 and 40 seconds.

Checks

A check is a short, read-only script over ssh: CPU, memory, disk, uptime, what’s running, runners, Docker, whether updates want a reboot, failed services. Nothing is installed by a check.

  • Muxen checks every machine every 15 minutes. Change that in Settings › General › Machine checks (0 means only when you ask).
  • Refresh on a machine’s page checks that one now; ⌘R checks them all.
  • The overview says when the last check finished.

Renaming and removing

Right-click a machine for Rename…, Disconnect and Remove from Muxen…. Renaming keeps its id, so its sessions, favorites and history stay with it. Removing takes it out of config.toml; nothing changes on the machine, and its runners stay registered.

For a cloud machine or a VM Muxen made, the last item is Destroy… instead: it deletes the droplet, or the VM’s container and disk, with everything on it.