RTFM: Linux, DevOps, and system administration

Okta: Integration with Google Workspaces, Part 1 – Provisioning
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27 April 2026

Continuing with Okta setup for our project. In previous parts we did SSO for Grafana (see Okta: setting up Grafana SSO with OIDC and Role mapping) and AWS (see AWS: setting up Okta SSO with AWS IAM Identity Center), and now the most interesting part: integrating Okta with Google Workspaces. What we’ll need to do:… Read More: Okta: Integration with Google Workspaces, Part 1 – Provisioning0 (0) »

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: SSL/TLS: Self-signed Certificate Authority for NGINX on FreeBSD0 (0) »

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: AWS: Setting up Okta SSO with AWS IAM Identity Center0… »

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: FreeBSD: Configuring FEMP – NGINX, PHP-FPM, MariaDB0 (0) »

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: VictoriaMetrics: Basic Monitoring for AWS, Linux, NGINX, and PHP5 (1) »

Okta: Configuring Grafana SSO with OIDC and Role Mapping
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27 March 2026

We finally “grew up” to using Okta on the current project, so there’s a short series of posts coming up on it. I wrote about Okta before, but that was 5-6 years ago, and there have been some interesting changes since then (see the #okta tag). Today we’ll be configuring SSO login via Okta for… Read More: Okta: Configuring Grafana SSO with OIDC and Role Mapping5 (1) »

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: VictoriaMetrics: using vmalert and query() in alerts for different $value… »

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: AWS: Amazon Linux – Sending Email with Postfix via Gmail1… »

AWS: Increasing the EBS volume size on an EC2 instance running Linux
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16 March 2026

Every time I need to do this, I have to look it up, even though I’ve written about it somewhere before – but it was a long time ago: manually increasing the disk size on an AWS EC2. You get used to Kubernetes, where it’s enough to just change a value in a PersistentVolumeClaim, and… Read More: AWS: Increasing the EBS volume size on an EC2 instance… »

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: AWS: ALB and Cloudflare – Configuring mTLS and AWS Security… »