Tillered Arctic

health

Check agent health status

health

Check Arctic agent health status.

Synopsis

arctic health [flags]

Description

The health command checks the liveness or readiness of Arctic agents. It does not require authentication.

Flags

FlagDescription
--readyzCheck readiness instead of liveness

Examples

Check Current Context

arctic health

Output:

Peer ID:     peer_01KBYMHC35F0N070F3XXMEZAZR
Name:        agent-1
URL:         http://192.168.3.251:8080
Status:      ok
Timestamp:   2025-12-09 04:43:41 UTC

Check Readiness

arctic health --readyz

Check Specific Agent

arctic health --url http://192.168.1.30:8080

JSON Output

Use -j as shorthand for -o json:

arctic health -j
{
  "peer_id": "peer_01KBYMHC35F0N070F3XXMEZAZR",
  "name": "agent-1",
  "url": "http://192.168.3.251:8080",
  "status": "ok",
  "timestamp": "2025-12-09 04:43:41 UTC"
}

Exit Codes

The health command uses specific exit codes:

CodeCondition
0Agent healthy
4Agent unreachable

Scripting Example

arctic health
exit_code=$?

case $exit_code in
    0)
        echo "Agent healthy"
        ;;
    4)
        echo "Agent down"
        send_alert "Arctic agent unreachable"
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Unexpected error: $exit_code"
        ;;
esac

Liveness vs Readiness

Liveness (/livez)

  • Default check
  • Indicates the agent process is running
  • Returns ok if the agent can respond

Readiness (/readyz)

  • Use --readyz flag
  • Indicates the agent is ready to serve requests
  • May return not ready during startup or maintenance

Authentication

Health checks do not require authentication. They are designed for use by:

  • Load balancers
  • Monitoring systems
  • Health check scripts
  • Kubernetes probes

See Also