ZFS Special VDEV Failure: How to Survive the Nightmare Scenario
A practical, ops-focused guide to diagnosing and recovering from ZFS special vdev failures: triage steps, commands, common mistakes, and checklists.
NAT Through VPN: Connect Conflicting Networks Without Breaking Services
Practical guide to using NAT over VPN when both sides share IP ranges: design patterns, fast diagnosis, commands, and failure modes in production.
Office VPN failover: keep tunnels up with 2 ISPs (without manual babysitting)
Design office VPN failover with two ISPs so tunnels stay up automatically. Routing, health checks, IPsec, BGP, monitoring, and fast diagnosis steps.
ESXi Alternatives for SMB: Proxmox vs XCP-ng vs Hyper-V
A practical SMB hypervisor comparison: Proxmox vs XCP-ng vs Hyper-V, with HA, backups, storage, commands, pitfalls, and a decision map.
Caps Lock and password rage: the smallest key with the biggest chaos
Caps Lock quietly breaks logins, triggers lockouts, and wastes time. Learn fast diagnosis, real commands, and hardening tactics for ops and users.
Debian 13: APT upgrade gone wrong β roll back one package without a domino collapse
Learn how to roll back one Debian 13 package safely after a bad APT upgrade, diagnose dependency traps, and prevent a domino downgrade in production.
Email: Inbound Spam Flood β Survive the Attack Without Blocking Real Users
Practical SRE playbook for surviving inbound spam floods: find bottlenecks fast, tune Postfix/Exim/Exchange, protect queues, and keep real mail flowing.
ZFS zfs diff: Finding Exactly What Changed Between Snapshots
Learn how to use zfs diff to pinpoint file changes between ZFS snapshots, interpret flags, avoid pitfalls, and troubleshoot replication issues fast.
Proxmox βVM is locked (backup/snapshot)β: how to remove a lock safely
A practical SRE guide to clear Proxmox VM backup/snapshot locks safely: diagnose real activity, recover stuck jobs, and avoid storage corruption.
VR Gaming GPU Requirements Are Totally Different: A Production Engineerβs Guide
VR demands low-latency, dual-eye high refresh rendering. Learn why flat-screen GPU advice fails, how to diagnose bottlenecks, and what to buy.
PostgreSQL vs MongoDB: flexible schema vs predictable opsβwho hurts less later
A production-minded comparison of PostgreSQL and MongoDB: schema flexibility vs operational predictability, with failure modes, playbooks, and commands.
VPN Full-Mesh for Three Offices: When You Need It and How to Keep It Manageable
Decide if a three-office VPN full-mesh is worth it. Learn failure modes, fast diagnosis, and hands-on commands to keep routing secure and sane.
The clock-speed arms race: why βmore GHzβ stopped working
Clock speed stopped scaling because power, heat, and memory limits hit hard. Learn what replaced GHz, how to diagnose bottlenecks, and what to do next.
Debian 13: PHP-FPM socket permissions β the tiny fix that kills 502s (case #35)
Fix 502 Bad Gateway on Debian 13 by correcting PHP-FPM Unix socket ownership, mode, and systemd tmpfiles so nginx can reach the socket.
VPN certificates: do it properly without permanent self-signed pain
A practical SRE guide to VPN certificates: build a sane PKI, automate rotation, diagnose TLS failures fast, and avoid self-signed chaos in production.
The reset button era: the most honest fix in computing
A pragmatic guide to resets in modern systems: why they work, when they lie, and how to diagnose root causes without superstition or downtime.
Debian 13: Fix βToo many redirectsβ in Nginx by killing the canonical/HTTPS loop
Stop Nginx redirect loops on Debian 13 by fixing canonical host + HTTPS logic, proxy headers, and one true redirect path with proofs and tests.
Turbo Boost: how CPUs cheat their spec sheets (legally)
Turbo Boost isnβt magicβitβs controlled overclocking within power and thermal rules. Learn what it changes, how to measure it, and how to run it safely.
The industry in 2026: old mistakes repeating in shiny new packaging
In 2026, outages still rhyme with old ones: hidden queues, noisy neighbors, bad assumptions, and over-optimizations. Learn how to diagnose and fix fast.
Ray tracing: what it actually adds beyond pretty screenshots
Ray tracing isnβt just eye candy. Learn what it changes in lighting, debugging, and performanceβand how to diagnose GPU, CPU, and memory bottlenecks fast.
Supercomputers with Silly Bugs: Scaling Problems to the Moon
A practical field guide to scaling failures in supercomputers: silly bugs, real bottlenecks, diagnostics commands, and incident stories from production.
The thermal wall: how physics ended marketing’s favorite story
Why single-core speed stopped rising: heat, power density, and memory limits. Practical diagnostics, commands, and fixes for real systems hitting the wall.
Proxmox on ZFS: the backup strategy that doesnβt lie (snapshots vs real backups)
Learn the no-nonsense Proxmox + ZFS backup strategy: snapshots vs backups, replication, testing restores, and commands to diagnose failures fast.
Spectre and Meltdown: When Security Started Costing Performance
A production-minded guide to Spectre/Meltdown mitigations, why they slowed systems, and how to diagnose, benchmark, and tune safely in 2026.
NVIDIA vs AMD vs Intel: what competition needs to stay sane
A production-minded look at NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel: where each wins, how to avoid lock-in, and the ops playbook for sane acceleration.
Better Typography for Docs That Engineers Actually Read
Practical typography rules for technical docs: ideal line length, headings, code fonts, and hyphenationβplus diagnostics, commands, and fixes.
Debian 13 auditd without killing disks: practical settings for sane auditing
Run auditd on Debian 13 without trashing SSDs: right-size rules, tame log writes, use queues and rotation, and diagnose bottlenecks fast.
Production With No Monitoring: Learning Youβre Down From a Customer
When production has no monitoring, customers become your pager. Learn failure modes, fast diagnosis steps, and practical commands to regain control.
Pentium II / III: the golden age when clocks still meant something
Why Pentium II/III era MHz tracked real performanceβand what SREs can still learn: bottlenecks, caches, buses, and honest tuning playbooks.
Google Search Console Crawl Anomaly: What It Means and What to Do
Understand Google Search Console crawl anomaly alerts, identify causes like timeouts, DNS, robots, or 5xx, and fix issues fast with checks.
DNS: NXDOMAIN vs SERVFAIL β the quick way to tell whatβs broken (and fix it)
Learn to tell NXDOMAIN from SERVFAIL fast, map each to likely failure domains, and run practical commands to fix DNS issues in production.
123456: Humanity’s Favorite Self-Sabotage
Why 123456 keeps wrecking accounts and uptime: real incident patterns, fast diagnosis steps, and hardening checklists for ops and security teams.
Debian 13 Firmware Missing After Install: Fix NIC and HBA Support the Right Way
Practical Debian 13 guide to diagnose and fix missing firmware for NICs and HBAs, install the right packages, and keep upgrades reliable.
VPN + Port Forwarding: Expose Services Safely Without Turning Your VPN Into a Hole
Practical SRE guide to exposing services through VPN with port forwarding, least privilege, firewalls, audits, and fast diagnosis for outages.
Build a Right-Side TOC for Docs: Sticky, Scroll-Margin, Active Section Highlighting
Build a right-side sticky table of contents with scroll-margin, active section highlighting, and reliable behavior across browsers, long pages, and SPAs.
Factory Overclocks: Marketing Trick or Real Value?
Factory-overclocked GPUs promise free performance, but can cost stability. Learn how to validate OC claims, diagnose crashes, and decide safely.
Why 4K Gets Easier Because of Software, Not Raw GPU Power
4K delivery is increasingly a software problem: codecs, upscalers, pipelines, and I/O. Learn how to diagnose bottlenecks and ship reliably.
Pentium Pro: the CPU that was too early for its own good
A production-minded look at the Pentium Pro: what it got right, why it flopped on desktops, and how to diagnose CPU bottlenecks like an SRE.
Ubuntu 24.04: DNS caches lie β flush the right cache (and stop flushing the wrong one) (case #86)
Ubuntu 24.04 DNS issues often come from the wrong cache. Learn what actually caches DNS, how to prove it, and which flush fixes work.
Ubuntu 24.04: MySQL βtoo many connectionsβ β fix it without making the DB slower
Stop MySQL βtoo many connectionsβ on Ubuntu 24.04 without slowing queries: diagnose the bottleneck, tune limits, pools, and safely scale capacity.
MySQL vs MariaDB: binlog disk explosionβhow to keep it under control
How to stop MySQL/MariaDB binlogs from eating disks: retention, replication, PITR, GTIDs, purge safety, and real commands to diagnose and fix it.
Google Glass: when the future felt awkward in public
Google Glass promised hands-free computing, but real-world reliability, privacy optics, and ops complexity made it feel awkwardβand hard to ship.
WordPress cron not running: why scheduled posts fail and how to fix
Scheduled posts missing? Learn why WordPress cron stops, how to diagnose WP-Cron vs real cron, and fixes for caching, PHP-FPM, DNS, and time drift.
Ubuntu 24.04 SSD/NVMe performance falls over time: prove itβs TRIM/GC and fix it
Diagnose Ubuntu 24.04 SSD/NVMe slowdowns that worsen over time, prove TRIM/garbage collection is the culprit, and apply fixes you can verify.
Proxmox ZFS checksum errors: disk or cable β how to prove which one
A practical, evidence-based playbook to prove whether Proxmox ZFS checksum errors come from a bad disk, flaky cable, HBA, or backplane.
ZFS Scrub: How Often to Run It and What It Proves
A practical guide to ZFS scrub frequency, what scrub results actually prove, and how to diagnose slow scrubs, errors, and hidden disk issues.
MySQL vs MariaDB max_connections: stop OOM crashes on small servers
Prevent MySQL/MariaDB OOM crashes on small servers by sizing max_connections, per-thread memory, and InnoDB buffers with fast diagnosis and commands.
Drivers as Weapons: How Software Can βChangeβ Your GPU
GPU drivers can alter clocks, power limits, memory behavior, and stability. Learn how to diagnose, prove, and control driver-induced GPU changes in production.
ZFS Dedup Tables (DDT): What They Are and Why They Hurt
Understand ZFS dedup tables (DDT), why they crush RAM and performance, how to diagnose pain fast, and what to do instead in production.
Debian 13 kernel tainted: what it means and when you should care
Learn what βkernel taintedβ means on Debian 13, how to read taint flags, and when to care for support, debugging, reliability, and incident response.