Automation, scripting, infrastructure management for DevOps, SysAdmin and other Tech stuff
When someone asks for “just FTP access” to a Linux server, I almost always translate that into “they need file transfer, but we should not open an actual FTP-shaped problem.” In most modern environments, SFTP is the right answer. It uses SSH, it is encrypted by default, it does not need a separate daemon in
SFTP Server Setup with Chroot on Linux Read Post »
Debugging TLS issues is something I do more than I’d like. Browser errors are often vague, and getting to the actual root cause usually requires some manual inspection with OpenSSL. These are the techniques I actually use. Connecting to a Server and Inspecting the Certificate The most basic thing — see what certificate a server
OpenSSL: Verifying Certificate Chains and Debugging TLS Connections Read Post »
I do not like certificate expiry surprises, and I do not trust calendar reminders as the only defense. Certificates expire on weekends, behind CDNs, on forgotten admin panels, on odd ports, and on third-party services nobody thought to inventory. That is why I prefer central monitoring over scattered shell scripts living on random servers. Zabbix
Zabbix SSL Certificate Monitoring Read Post »
Apache’s approach to SSL is fundamentally different from Nginx. Where Nginx has SSL baked in, Apache uses a module system — mod_ssl — that needs to be explicitly enabled. The configuration syntax is also more verbose. That’s not necessarily bad; Apache’s granular configuration options can be very useful. But it means more places where things
Installing and Configuring SSL in Apache: Virtual Hosts, Modules, and Best Practices Read Post »
A lot of Windows certificate guides stop at IIS bindings. That is useful, but it is only part of the picture. On real Windows Server systems I often need to inspect certificates outside IIS, import them for RDP, trust an internal root CA, verify that a private key actually landed where the service account can
Windows Server Certificate Management with MMC Guide Read Post »
I used cron for years without really questioning it. It works, it’s everywhere, it’s well-understood. But over time I noticed a few recurring frustrations: no built-in logging, missed jobs when the system was off, no dependency management, and debugging failed jobs meant hunting through syslog. Systemd timers solve most of these problems, and on systems
Systemd Timers: A Better Cron for Modern Linux Systems Read Post »
I like monitoring systems that make their assumptions obvious. Prometheus is one of them. It scrapes targets on a schedule, stores time series locally, evaluates rules, and fires alerts when conditions match. There is no mystery about where the numbers came from. If a graph looks wrong, I can usually inspect the raw metric in
Prometheus and Node Exporter for Linux Monitoring Read Post »
IIS has the most friction of any common web server when it comes to SSL certificate management. Not because it’s technically harder, but because the workflow is different from Linux-based servers and the GUI-heavy approach obscures what’s actually happening. I’ve set up SSL on IIS for clients a number of times, and each time I
Installing SSL Certificates on Windows Server IIS: Step-by-Step Guide Read Post »
Disk space has a way of filling up at the worst possible time. I’ve had databases refuse to write because /var was full, deployments fail because /tmp was full, and applications crash because their log directories hit quota. All of them were preventable with basic disk space management. Here’s how I handle it. Finding Large
Server Disk Space Management: Finding What’s Eating Your Storage Read Post »
People love declaring iptables dead every few years. The kernel moved on, nftables is the direction of travel, and higher-level tools like UFW and firewalld are what many admins touch day to day. All of that is true. It is also true that I still run into iptables constantly: older hosts, minimal cloud images, vendor
iptables Firewall Practical Guide for Linux Read Post »