Rebuilding My Ghost Blog After the Database Was Gone

My Ghost container ran outside the hosting panel, so the panel backup had none of it. How I rebuilt the blog from Markdown sources and what I verified.

Extracting a Proxmox VMA Backup Without Proxmox

No Proxmox host left, but a vzdump .vma.zst holds the database you need. How I parsed the VMA format in Python and streamed the disk out of it.

Hytale Server Files Explained: Where Your World Actually Lives

What each file and folder in a Hytale server directory does, where the world really lives (universe/, not world/), and what belongs in your backup.

My Server Ran Out and My Backups Were Truncated: What I Learned

A Proxmox host went away for good and the offsite backups turned out to be cut off. What I could recover, what was gone, and the checks I run now.

PaperMC Download API v3: Why Your "latest" One-Liner Returns 404

The old api.papermc.io v2 "latest" URL returns 404. How to download Paper and Velocity from the fill v3 API with curl, jq and a SHA-256 check.

How Much RAM Does a Hytale Server Need? The Formula I Actually Use

About 1 GB per player, 4 GB floor, view distance that scales with the square, 2–4 GB for the OS. The formula behind my Hytale RAM calculator.

My AI Assistant "Stopped Answering" — It Was Missing Three apt Packages

A self-hosted AI assistant went silent on a document request. Not the model, not permissions: poppler, ImageMagick and Ghostscript were missing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.