HP Victus GPU Stuck at ~30 W, Low FPS at 99% GPU Usage: It Was "HW Power Braking" (EC Reset Fix)
HP Victus RTX 5050 stuck at 27 W with 99% GPU usage and low FPS. nvidia-smi showed HW Power Braking; an EC reset brought it back to 72 W.
Latest
Odoo: Send a Silent Internal Copy of Every Confirmed Booking (and Why the Customer Got It Instead)
An Odoo automation rule + code server action that mails an internal copy of each confirmed rental, and the use_default_to trap that mails the customer.
Two-Way Syncing a Windows Desktop to a Storage Box with rclone bisync and Task Scheduler
Two Windows laptops, one SMB storage box, no OneDrive: rclone bisync every 10 minutes via Task Scheduler, with the resync, filter and PST gotchas I hit.
My Gaming Laptop Called Its Own Charger "Non-Original" and Throttled Everything — an EC Reset Fixed It
HP gaming laptop flagged its original charger and throttled CPU + GPU. Measuring it with PowerShell and nvidia-smi, and the EC reset that fixed it.
“I Barely Use It” — Where $100 of AI API Credit Actually Went
A business AI assistant drained $100 of API credit while the owner swore he barely touched it. The real drivers: a 30-minute heartbeat, premium models on background jobs, and one retry storm.
Let's Encrypt Kept Failing After a Server Move. The Culprit Was a Second A Record.
Two A records after a migration meant round robin, and Let's Encrypt's multi-perspective validation kept hitting the old server. Diagnosis and fix.
Microsoft 365 Expired? Rescuing a Mailbox from the Local OST into a PST
The M365 subscription lapsed, the mailbox was locked server-side, only Outlook's OST cache was left. How I got 3,844 items into a PST plus .msg files.
Turning HTML-Only Email Receipts into PDFs with Headless Chromium
Many receipts are HTML mails without attachment. Render them to PDF with Playwright, and dodge the Gmail label gotcha that reprocesses a thread forever.
My AI Receipt Sorter Shifted Amounts by 2,000 Euros, So I Took the Numbers Away From It
An LLM misread credit card statements by up to -2,000 EUR. Now statements are parsed line by line with pdfplumber and the model only reads single receipts.
Mail + Web on One Server: 4 GB or 8 GB of RAM? I Measured It
Real RSS numbers from a panel box with mail and web: ClamAV eats over a gigabyte. Why summing ps lies, how to measure with smem, and when 4 GB is enough.
Lower Your DNS TTL Before You Migrate a Server (A Checklist)
A 24-hour TTL turns a server move into a day of half-broken DNS. When to lower it, how to check what resolvers see with dig, and what to tell DNS support.
My Hosting Panel's Firewall Kept Wiping Docker's iptables Chains
KeyHelp loads its firewall with iptables-restore and flushes Docker's chains. How to spot it, the quick fix, and the options to make it stick.
Postfix SNI: "map lookup problem" and TLS Alert 80 — the texthash Fix
Per-domain mail hostnames via Postfix SNI: why smtpd hit TLS alert 80 though postmap worked, the ACL fix for Let's Encrypt keys, and test commands.
KeyHelp: The Free Plesk Alternative I Moved To (and Its API Traps)
Plesk license expired, panel dead. I moved to KeyHelp: non-interactive install, one client per company, and the API gotchas that cost me hours.
My AI Agent Invented a CLI Flag, and I Called the Error "Cosmetic"
A daily AI agent job kept failing with "unknown flag --readonly". The flag never existed. Why agents invent flags, and why --token=x beats --token x.
My AI Agent Only Saw 71% of Its Own Memory
An AI agent's long-term memory file grew to 70 KB and the bootstrap cut it at 71%. Two automatic writers caused it. How I split curated vs. archive memory.
Mapping a Storage Box as a Windows Network Drive (and Why Windows "Forgets" the Password)
Map an SMB storage box as a persistent Windows drive with PowerShell, and fix the MicrosoftAccount\ prefix that makes Windows lose the saved password.
Bridging a Hytale Forum and Discord Without Making a Mess
Bridging a XenForo forum and Discord: threads routed to channels, Discord replies posted under the user's own forum account, loop markers.
Reskinning Ghost's Source Theme with Nothing but Code Injection
How my blog got its terminal/neon look on the stock Ghost Source theme: site-wide code injection, theme settings, and the 62.5% rem trap behind tiny text.
Serving a Static SPA on Apache: .htaccess Fallback, Caching, and the Container Nobody Used
Deep links to a Vite/React SPA 404 on Apache until you add a fallback. Rewrite rules, FallbackResource, cache headers, soft 404s, and what really serves.
Apache as a Reverse Proxy for Docker Apps (and the Panel Trap)
Put Docker apps behind Apache: ProxyPass, ProxyPreserveHost, X-Forwarded-Proto, WebSockets, localhost-only ports, and why a panel gives you 302/404.
Linux
Running PHP 7.4, 8.3 and 8.4 Side by Side on One Server
One server, three apps, three PHP versions: PHP-FPM per version, one pool per site, a handler per vhost and the right CLI binary for every cron job.
Linux
Plesk License Expired: What Still Works and How I Got Around It
An expired Plesk license blocks the panel and the plesk CLI, but sites and mail keep running. How I restored a mailbox anyway with mailmng-core.
Docker
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.
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.
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.
Gameserver
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.
Linux
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.
Linux
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.
Docker
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.
Docker
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.
Windows Server
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.