Category Archives: UNIX/Linux

SSL/TLS: Self-signed Certificate Authority for NGINX on FreeBSD
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18 April 2026

I run a bunch of web services on my home NAS – Grafana, VictoriaMetrics, my own WordPress blog, and half a dozen other small things. The whole series of posts on FreeBSD and NAS starts here – FreeBSD: Home NAS, part 1 – setting up ZFS mirror, there are 15 parts as of now. NGINX+PHP… 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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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: 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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FreeBSD: Home NAS, Part 15: Automating Backups – scripts, rsync, rclone
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15 March 2026

This is essentially the last major task – setting up automated backup creation. In the post FreeBSD: Home NAS, Part 13: Planning Data Storage and Backups I described the general idea in more detail – what gets backed up, where, what gets stored and how – and today is the purely technical part about the actual… Read More »

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MikroTik: WireGuard VPN Setup and Linux Peer Configuration
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14 March 2026

Another one of the many nice features of MikroTik – built-in WireGuard support (although even cheap TP-Link Archers have it). In my setup, the MikroTik RB4011 acts as a “VPN Hub” – all clients connect to it and are united into a single network, and the role of VPN is slightly exaggerated is genuinely important… Read More »

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FreeBSD: Home NAS, part 12: synchronizing data with Syncthing
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14 March 2026

I’m gradually getting closer to wrapping up the home NAS setup on FreeBSD. There’s already a ZFS pool, datasets, and monitoring – time to start setting up backup automation. But what seemed pretty simple at first – “just copy the needed directories from the work laptop” – turned out to be an increasingly interesting problem… Read More »

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