Linux
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.
Lukas
Sysadmin, coder, CIO at one company and CEO of my own. Linux, Windows Server, game servers — I write down what I set up and what broke.
Hytale
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.
Linux
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.
Minecraft
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.
Hytale
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.
business-ai
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.
Linux
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.
Security
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.
Linux
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.
Hytale
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.
Gameserver
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
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.