The Idempotency Bug That Uploaded the Same File 153 Times

A cron job re-ran a side effect every two minutes because its "done" marker was gated on a flaky downstream step. The fix is one line moved up. Here's the pattern.

My Blog Went Down Because Plesk Stopped Renewing the Cert — Here's the certbot Escape

A Plesk-managed Let's Encrypt cert expired and took the site down. The fix wasn't renewing it in Plesk — it was moving the domain to standalone certbot. Two gotchas included.

Grafana vs Netdata vs Uptime Kuma — I Run All Three, Here's What Each Is Actually For

Honest comparison of Prometheus+Grafana, Netdata and Uptime Kuma — what each one is good at, what it costs you, and why running all three is a reasonable answer.

Running a Hytale Server in Docker With a Web Panel (and Ditching My systemd Unit)

Move a Hytale server from a bare systemd unit into Docker behind a web panel — container layout, UDP ports, console access, and keeping systemd as a fallback.

Discord Alerts From Your Server Logs — A 100-Line Bot That Beats a Monitoring Stack

Tail a game server log, match crash and freeze patterns, ping a Discord webhook. Includes the noise-control rules that stop it becoming a channel nobody reads.

Monitoring a Game Server Over WireGuard — Prometheus Without Exposing a Single Port

Scrape node_exporter across a WireGuard tunnel so no metrics port is public — plus the pps/bps alert that tells you a DDoS from a player spike.

One Public IP, Many VMs — Port-Splitting a Proxmox Host with nftables

How to route ports 80/443 to one container and 3389/game ports to another VM behind a single public IP on Proxmox — DNAT rules, hairpin, and making it survive a reboot.

Docker vs Podman — What's the Difference and Should You Switch?

Docker vs Podman compared — daemon vs daemonless, rootless security, systemd/Quadlet integration, compose support, and when switching is actually worth it.

Coolify — Self-Hosted PaaS, and the Cheats I Wish I'd Known

Run Coolify as your own Heroku — install, deploy apps and docker-compose services, automatic HTTPS, plus the API, sslip testing and path-routing cheats.

Tailscale vs WireGuard — Which VPN Should You Actually Run?

Tailscale vs WireGuard compared — Tailscale is built on WireGuard but adds NAT traversal, MagicDNS, ACLs and zero-config mesh. When to pick raw WireGuard instead.

CrowdSec — A Modern Take on fail2ban

Set up CrowdSec on Linux as a fail2ban alternative — the agent/bouncer split, parsing logs, the firewall bouncer, community blocklists, and honest trade-offs.

Coolify vs Dokploy vs CapRover — Self-Hosted PaaS Compared (2026)

Coolify vs Dokploy vs CapRover compared — architecture, proxy, git deploys, multi-server, and which self-hosted Heroku alternative to pick for your stack.

Linux

Proxmox vs VMware ESXi in 2026 — And How to Migrate

Proxmox VE vs VMware ESXi compared in 2026 — cost, features, clustering, backups — plus how to migrate ESXi VMs to Proxmox with the built-in import wizard.

AI

Ollama — A Local LLM for Sysadmin Tasks

Run a local LLM with Ollama on Linux — install, pull models, use the HTTP API from scripts, and analyze logs offline without sending data to a cloud provider.

Windows Server

Managing Windows Server Core Without a GUI

Run Windows Server Core without the desktop — sconfig basics, PowerShell remoting, Windows Admin Center, adding roles, and the gotchas that catch GUI admins.

Gameserver

Counter-Strike 2 Dedicated Server on Linux

Install a CS2 dedicated server on Ubuntu/Debian with SteamCMD, get a GSLT, set the right ports and cvars, add Metamod/CounterStrikeSharp, and run it under systemd.

Docker

A Prometheus + Grafana Monitoring Stack in Docker

Stand up Prometheus, Grafana and node_exporter with Docker Compose — real scrape config, node metrics, a dashboard, and alert rules that actually fire.

Docker

Self-Hosted Uptime Monitoring with Uptime Kuma

Run Uptime Kuma in Docker for uptime monitoring — HTTP/TCP/ping checks, Telegram and Discord alerts, a public status page, and a reverse proxy with TLS.

Linux

systemd Timers Instead of cron

Replace cron jobs with systemd timers — .timer + .service pairs, OnCalendar syntax, Persistent catch-up, journald logging, and when cron is still fine.

Hytale

Hytale Server Backups and Auto-Restart with systemd

Keep a Hytale dedicated server alive — clean nightly world backups with tar + restic, a scheduled daily restart via systemd timer, and crash recovery.

Gameserver

Factorio Headless Server on Linux

Set up a Factorio headless dedicated server on Ubuntu/Debian — download the official tarball, server-settings.json, port 34197 UDP, mods, RCON and a systemd unit.

Gameserver

Rust Dedicated Server on Linux

Install a Rust dedicated server on Ubuntu/Debian with SteamCMD, set the server.* cvars, open the right ports, add Oxide/uMod plugins, and run it under systemd.

Windows Server

Windows Task Scheduler from PowerShell — Cron for Windows

Create and manage scheduled tasks on Windows from PowerShell — New-ScheduledTaskAction, triggers, run as SYSTEM, S4U logon, XML export, and the gotchas.

Linux

Proxmox + ZFS — A Storage Pool That Survives a Disk Death

Build a redundant ZFS pool on Proxmox VE — mirror vs raidz, ashift, ARC cap, scrubs, and how to replace a dead disk without losing a VM.