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 »
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 »
Self-signed certificates get a bad reputation because browsers show scary warning pages when they encounter them. But that reputation comes from misuse — using self-signed certs where a trusted certificate is needed. In the right context, a self-signed certificate is the correct tool. Here’s where I actually use them: internal APIs that communicate server-to-server, development
Self-Signed SSL Certificates: When to Use Them and How to Create Them Read Post »
I spent years using OpenVPN for internal VPNs and I was always mildly frustrated by it. The configuration files are long, the certificates require careful management, the performance is decent but not great, and debugging connection issues is painful. Then I tried WireGuard and everything got simpler. WireGuard is modern, fast, and has a remarkably
WireGuard VPN on Linux: Setup and Configuration Read Post »
PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is how PHP runs behind Nginx. The two don’t talk to each other directly — Nginx hands PHP requests to PHP-FPM via FastCGI, PHP-FPM processes them, and sends responses back. Getting this configuration right affects both performance and stability. I’ve set this up dozens of times. Here’s what I’ve learned about
PHP-FPM and Nginx: Configuration and Performance Tuning Read Post »
UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) is the default firewall management tool on Ubuntu. It’s a frontend to iptables that makes common firewall tasks manageable without having to write iptables rules directly. I use it on most of my Ubuntu servers — it handles the 95% case well and doesn’t get in the way. Installation and Initial State
UFW Firewall on Ubuntu: Setup and Daily Use Read Post »
Certificate expiry is one of those problems that feels embarrassing when it happens. Every time I read about a major site going down because of an expired certificate, I think about how preventable it is. The certificate was always going to expire on a known date. The notification system failed, not the certificate. This guide
SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting: Never Let a Cert Expire Again Read Post »
If you’ve ever tried to install an SSL certificate and hit a wall because the server expects .crt but your CA sent you .pem, you know how frustrating this rabbit hole can get. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit. The good news is that once you understand what these formats actually
SSL Certificate Formats Explained: PEM, DER, PFX, CRT and More Read Post »
Redis is one of those services that starts as a simple cache and ends up being a critical piece of infrastructure. I’ve used it for session storage, rate limiting, job queues, pub/sub, and as a general-purpose key-value store. Getting the configuration right from the start saves headaches later. Installation For the latest stable version from
Redis on Linux: Installation, Configuration, and Production Tuning Read Post »