Monthly Archives: March 2026

AWS: Setting up Okta SSO with AWS IAM Identity Center
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31 March 2026

In the previous part of the Okta series we set up SSO for Grafana (see Okta: configuring Grafana SSO with OIDC and Role mapping) – now for a more interesting task: configuring SSO for AWS, with not just login but also user provisioning. Okta has a ready-made AWS IAM Identity Center App that lets you… Read More »

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FreeBSD: Configuring FEMP – NGINX, PHP-FPM, MariaDB
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30 March 2026

Another installment in the FreeBSD Home NAS series, though this one isn’t really about the NAS – it’s purely about running web services. The full FreeBSD/NAS series starts here – FreeBSD: Home NAS, part 1 – ZFS mirror setup, which now has 15 parts, but FEMP gets its own post. My FreeBSD host already runs… Read More »

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VictoriaMetrics: Basic Monitoring for AWS, Linux, NGINX, and PHP
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28 March 2026

The RTFM migration from DigitalOcean to AWS went smoothly, and I’m gradually settling in. New infrastructure, everything new – so for the first while I want to keep a close eye on the server and blog state, which means setting up basic monitoring for WordPress: NGINX, PHP-FPM, the database, and the infrastructure running it all.… Read More »

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VictoriaMetrics: using vmalert and query() in alerts for different $value values
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26 March 2026

Just a quick note, because I’ve needed to do something like this fairly often – and only today discovered how elegantly it’s done with vmalert. So, sometimes in an alert you want to display multiple $value entries, for example: – alert: OpenAI Budget Usage expr: | openai_budget_used_usd / openai_budget_total_usd * 100 > 80 … annotations:… Read More »

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AWS: Amazon Linux – Sending Email with Postfix via Gmail
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16 March 2026

Continuing the setup of the new RTFM server. The next step is configuring the ability to send mail from EC2, since both important messages for the root user and RTFM itself need to send emails. I was thinking of using AWS Simple Email Service – purely to refresh my memory on how to work with… Read More »

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AWS: ALB and Cloudflare – Configuring mTLS and AWS Security Rules
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16 March 2026

While preparing the infrastructure for migrating RTFM from the DigitalOcean server to AWS (see AWS: basic infrastructure setup for WordPress) I decided to also try AWS ALB mutual authentication (for some reason I thought this feature launched at the last re:Invent, at the end of 2024, but it’s actually been around since late 2023 –… Read More »

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AWS: Self-Managed EC2 NAT Gateway vs AWS Managed NAT
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15 March 2026

I looked at the costs for the infrastructure described in the previous post AWS: basic infrastructure setup for WordPress, and let out a heavy sigh: One NAT Gateway is a quarter of my AWS spend, and even with AWS Credits I can’t help feeling a bit stingy about it. There’s an option to remove the… Read More »

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AWS: Basic Infrastructure Setup for WordPress
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15 March 2026

It’s time for a major server upgrade for RTFM, which I usually do by migrating to a new server – because I also do various other upgrades along the way, like upgrading the PHP version or even migrating to a different cloud. This time I’m planning to move from DigitalOcean, where RTFM has been hosted… Read More »

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