Sleeping isn’t always healthy

AMP said the server was sleeping. The port was open. Nobody could join.

That exposed a blind spot in AMP Watchdog: asking the control panel whether a server is healthy only works if the panel has the full picture. AMP’s wake-on-connect listener had stopped responding, while its status still looked normal.

The watchdog now makes an actual Minecraft status request alongside the AMP check. An open connection alone doesn’t count—it needs a valid response. Two consecutive failures mark a configured watch offline and feed into the existing alert rules, reducing the chance of a brief handover triggering an alert.

Discord mentions stay reserved for offline alerts. Sleep transitions and recovery messages don’t need to ping everyone.

AMP Watchdog is now running on my production servers. The update passed 65 automated tests, including cases where a connection opens but the server never answers.

For now, it alerts me when something needs attention. Automatic recovery can come later.