Field-tested guides, original benchmarks, and operator notes on Linux, self-hosting, and privacy.https://www.slashgeek.net/en-ushttps://www.slashgeek.net/2026/08/01/a-backup-is-not-a-backup-until-you-restore-it/https://www.slashgeek.net/2026/08/01/a-backup-is-not-a-backup-until-you-restore-it/Backup success, archive integrity, and application recovery are three claims. The defaults in restic, pg_restore, Compose, and Gitea prove the weakest.Sat, 01 Aug 2026 06:35:00 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2018/07/17/self-driving-cars-will-be-a-game-changer/https://www.slashgeek.net/2018/07/17/self-driving-cars-will-be-a-game-changer/I don't think most people appreciate how big of a deal self-driving cars will be when it is commercially available. When I talk about self-driving I mean fully autonomous car without any driver assistance, not driver assists system like "AutoPilot" in Tesla cars or Cruise Automation for GM and many Tue, 17 Jul 2018 15:17:41 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2018/04/24/how-to-mount-remote-file-systems-over-ssh/https://www.slashgeek.net/2018/04/24/how-to-mount-remote-file-systems-over-ssh/I have a remote storage server in a colocation with 100s of TB of space. Yes, I know I have data-hoarding issues, no I am not going to get psychiatric help for it. But if you are like me and often find yourself accessing your data remotely there better ways to browse your data unlike GUI based SFTP Tue, 24 Apr 2018 12:36:23 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2018/04/15/how-to-hide-your-bash-command-history/https://www.slashgeek.net/2018/04/15/how-to-hide-your-bash-command-history/It's probably not a good idea to completely turn off bash history, one of the reasons bash history exists as a reference to mistakes or useful past commands you can't recall. But there are also legitimate reasons who don't want to log some bash commands for security or privacy reasons. Here are 3 waSun, 15 Apr 2018 14:41:43 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2018/04/09/the-social-media-echo-chamber-hell/https://www.slashgeek.net/2018/04/09/the-social-media-echo-chamber-hell/Not all hell is made of fire, some are made of an abyss with no way of pulling yourself out of it. With Social media's it's like jumping from one abyss to another. There is a common internet trope, the idea that if you are self-aware enough to understand the dangers of social media you should be ablMon, 09 Apr 2018 13:32:25 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2018/04/06/converting-mp4-to-webm-using-ffmpeg/https://www.slashgeek.net/2018/04/06/converting-mp4-to-webm-using-ffmpeg/For the longest time (still is to a smaller extent), gif ruled the interweb of video-based memes. But the problem with gif is they slow to load files are usually much larger than a file of the same video with a lower quality and slow loading. Even with large bandwidth gif file tends to load slower. Fri, 06 Apr 2018 21:08:39 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2018/04/02/hide-macos-desktop-icons-using-cli/https://www.slashgeek.net/2018/04/02/hide-macos-desktop-icons-using-cli/One of my biggest pet peeves is clutter. I could very well have OCD (though not formally diagnosed). I often find myself spending an insane amount of time organizing things or optimizing thing (ie, page load of this site), which could have very well been spent on things more important, like actuallyMon, 02 Apr 2018 16:12:31 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2018/03/27/how-to-enable-alpn-on-nginx/https://www.slashgeek.net/2018/03/27/how-to-enable-alpn-on-nginx/LPN (Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation) is a TLS extension that allows an efficient way to negotiate encrypted traffic between the browser and the server. In order to enable ALPN on a server, a web server needs to have HTTPS configured and support the HTTP/2 protocol. ALPN doesn't provide any aTue, 27 Mar 2018 10:36:08 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2018/03/27/why-i-am-not-too-enthusiastic-about-amp/https://www.slashgeek.net/2018/03/27/why-i-am-not-too-enthusiastic-about-amp/According to Google, the whole point of AMP is for mobile users to have fast access to websites without users having to worry about large data usage or load time. There is also issues with websites having pop-up ads, too many external/internal javascript loading, which causes websites to become slowTue, 27 Mar 2018 09:58:05 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2018/03/20/how-not-to-store-user-passwords/https://www.slashgeek.net/2018/03/20/how-not-to-store-user-passwords/If you are running a Web App and you are storing user passwords, it is very easy to get things horribly wrong, it's better to use third-party sign-in services like Facebook, Twitter or Google. In my experience, I have seen a lot of Web-Apps and Services going this route, not because they are lazy - Tue, 20 Mar 2018 15:25:08 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2018/03/18/5-tips-to-learn-any-programming-language/https://www.slashgeek.net/2018/03/18/5-tips-to-learn-any-programming-language/Recently I have been spending an unholy amount of time learning a new programming language and improve my existing knowledge with lots of practice. My eventual goal is to reach a stage with a single programming language where I won't have to refer to the documentation as frequently as I currently doSun, 18 Mar 2018 14:12:41 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2018/03/01/auto-redirect-https-links/https://www.slashgeek.net/2018/03/01/auto-redirect-https-links/I have been recently on a binge mode in converting all my sites to https. Including this one. It was long overdue. Thanks to the guys at “Let’s Encrypt” and their automated script called certbot, the whole process is insanely easy to set up. It literally took me less than 3 minutes each on all the sThu, 01 Mar 2018 16:03:00 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2018/02/28/wanting-learn-programming-can-overwhelming/https://www.slashgeek.net/2018/02/28/wanting-learn-programming-can-overwhelming/For you to be a decent web application developer, you need to have a good grasp of HTML, CSS (has frameworks), PHP, MySQL/MariaDB/Postgres/SQLite (or frameworks/language like PHP-Laravel, ruby on rails, Python/Django/flask - I don't want to even list a large number of javascript framework or many alWed, 28 Feb 2018 17:30:17 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2017/11/14/flush-dns-cache-mac-osx/https://www.slashgeek.net/2017/11/14/flush-dns-cache-mac-osx/In order to use the internet, we need a DNS server to resolve domain names to IP address, in the early days of the internet you DNS server address all most always used to be your ISP’s DNS server. Nowadays we have many options with a lot of free and open DNS servers, most notably Google DNS (8.8.8.8Tue, 14 Nov 2017 16:07:51 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2017/11/09/automate-ssh-login/https://www.slashgeek.net/2017/11/09/automate-ssh-login/I have to remotely log in to a lot of servers quite often, which is why I have setup several ssh related aliases on `~/.bash_profile` (Mac) or `~/.profile` (Ubuntu) to automate my login process so that I could simply type `sg` on the terminal and get logged in to my remote server without any promptsThu, 09 Nov 2017 19:55:26 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2017/11/08/think-certifications-overrated/https://www.slashgeek.net/2017/11/08/think-certifications-overrated/IT certifications will probably help you weed out the absolutely hopeless to the probably hopeful prospect – and that’s about it. When it comes out to actual job relevance I found certifications to be largely useless. Experience, on the other hand, can be tremendously valuable. I will take someone wWed, 08 Nov 2017 16:36:53 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2017/10/23/online-privacy-doesnt-exist/https://www.slashgeek.net/2017/10/23/online-privacy-doesnt-exist/There was a time when I was naive enough to think that there are tools you can use – TOR, VPN, Opensource Operating Systems, encryption – that would protect us from nefarious state players, organizations and black hats. But once you are in the middle of it all, meaning once you start running an ISP,Mon, 23 Oct 2017 22:14:56 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2017/07/31/5-year-anniversary/https://www.slashgeek.net/2017/07/31/5-year-anniversary/5 years in itself is not a long time, but on internet time scale 5 years is not too savvy. It's not that hard actually, I just have to keep paying the monthly VPS fees and the yearly domain renewal and I am good to go. it's not like I write very often. As a matter of fact, this is my first post of tMon, 31 Jul 2017 22:04:17 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2016/11/04/recover-deleted-files-linux/https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/11/04/recover-deleted-files-linux/There is a difference between deleting files using a windows manager GUI and deleting files using CLI. When deleting files using windows manager you are simply moving files from one directory to trash directory. The only thing that gets updated is your filesystem inode metadata information (timestamFri, 04 Nov 2016 19:04:19 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2016/10/25/termdown-cli-countdown-timer-stopwatch/https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/10/25/termdown-cli-countdown-timer-stopwatch/I like to do my work in small timed chunks. I follow the Pomodoro method, the idea is that you spend 25 minutes focused work on whatever that you want to work on and then take a break for 5-10 minutes then go for another 25-30 minute chunk. Working this way helps me get more done. In this hyperactivTue, 25 Oct 2016 08:11:11 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2016/06/25/using-lists-alone-wont-make-productive/https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/06/25/using-lists-alone-wont-make-productive/I am a productive junkie for as long as I can remember. I started with simple text files written in notepad and slowly my obsession with to-do lists morphed into wanting to try almost every single to-do lists out there. Over the years after many failed attempts of switching from one to-do apps to anSat, 25 Jun 2016 05:28:57 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2016/06/24/5-youtube-dl-tips-might-not-know/https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/06/24/5-youtube-dl-tips-might-not-know/youtube-dl is a python based command line video downloader that just works. Despite its name would suggest, youtube-dl downloads more than just youtube videos, it currently supports more than 800 online video and audio sites. If you are using a desktop app or web app to download videos now, chances Fri, 24 Jun 2016 21:28:19 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2016/06/07/cloudflare-making-internet-little-bit-faster-select-group-people/https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/06/07/cloudflare-making-internet-little-bit-faster-select-group-people/When I wrote my previous article on Cloudflare, and how it craps all over my daily internet browsing and possibly millions of others, most of the responses I got was skepticism with a healthy dose of justification. Either, it’s my fault for being born and living in a country that is not on the favorTue, 07 Jun 2016 21:03:27 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2016/06/04/starting-isp-really-hard-became-profitable/https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/06/04/starting-isp-really-hard-became-profitable/This is a follow-up from my earlier post on how hard it is to run an ISP business. I would have preferred a single article but the first article was long enough, for my liking. In my earlier article, I went into detail and highlighted the pains and costs we had to deal with when […]Sat, 04 Jun 2016 21:25:22 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2016/06/01/still-time-save-online-advertisement/https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/06/01/still-time-save-online-advertisement/Even though I have Ads on this blog, I have absolute disgust towards online ads in general, in its current form. I wish there was a middle ground where online content could be monetized without compromising reading experience, getting malware through ads, having slow browsing speed, and fear of beinWed, 01 Jun 2016 23:50:03 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2016/05/31/starting-isp-really-hard-dont/https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/05/31/starting-isp-really-hard-dont/After reading Arstechnica’s excellent article on internet infrastructure and what goes on behind the scene to bring the internet to your home, I have a newfound respect for all the ISPs I have used in the past and the ISP business I am running now. Most of the stuff mentioned in the Ars article is [Tue, 31 May 2016 02:33:54 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2016/05/28/speed-ubuntu-updates-apt-fast/https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/05/28/speed-ubuntu-updates-apt-fast/As far as package manager goes apt-get is perhaps the most popular and well-liked package managers out there. One of the reasons Debian and Debian based distributions are so popular is because how ridiculous convenient the package management is. Having said that speed probably not one of the bright Sat, 28 May 2016 00:14:37 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2016/05/21/how-to-sleep-in-a-digital-world/https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/05/21/how-to-sleep-in-a-digital-world/It’s bad enough that I am a light sleeper. A small noise or a change in temperature can often wake me up and it can be very difficult for me to go back to sleep. I know some people who can just lie on the bed and easily fall asleep in a matter of minutes. […]Sat, 21 May 2016 09:24:44 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2016/05/17/cloudflare-is-ruining-the-internet-for-me/https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/05/17/cloudflare-is-ruining-the-internet-for-me/Follow up: Cloudflare: Making the internet a little bit faster – for a select group of people CloudFlare is a very helpful service if you are a website owner and don’t want to deal with separate services for CDN, DNS, basic DDOS protection and other (superficial) security needs. You can have all theTue, 17 May 2016 14:14:22 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2016/05/13/enable-trim-support-hackintosh/https://www.slashgeek.net/2016/05/13/enable-trim-support-hackintosh/I recently did a Hackintosh build after fiddling with the idea for more than 3-4 years. I don’t know why but for some reason I always thought Hackintosh builds are a huge project with many different parts that could go horribly wrong and in the worst possible case I will end up with a new […]Fri, 13 May 2016 18:40:51 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2015/10/02/how-to-prevent-a-specific-ubuntu-package-from-updating/https://www.slashgeek.net/2015/10/02/how-to-prevent-a-specific-ubuntu-package-from-updating/Sometimes a newer version of popular packages may no longer support older config options. So either you have to painstakingly port all the old config options to the new ones, or hold off on updating the applications at all. One way to do it would be to only upgrade the packages that you do want […]Fri, 02 Oct 2015 19:49:54 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2014/11/04/remote-desktop-ssh-tunneling/https://www.slashgeek.net/2014/11/04/remote-desktop-ssh-tunneling/One of my client’s requirement is to have a Ubuntu server with a Desktop Environment. Once in a while, he will call me up to look at some problems he is having with one of his GUI based applications. It’s not always possible for me to physically be there to see what the problem is, […]Tue, 04 Nov 2014 16:59:29 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/07/25/ubuntu-edge-brilliant/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/07/25/ubuntu-edge-brilliant/As of this writing, Ubuntu Edge funding have reached $5.6M out of their audacious $32M goal. If they reach their funding goal, it will be the single largest crowdfunded product yet. Its been a little over 2 days since Ubuntu launched their funding campaign and it still too early to tell if they can Thu, 25 Jul 2013 14:21:53 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/07/18/geeky-sub-reddit/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/07/18/geeky-sub-reddit/I spend an unhealthy amount of time on Reddit and I keep telling myself that the time spent on Reddit is not wasted since I am learning something new almost every day. See, your experience with Reddit with wildly differ depending on the sub-reedits you are subscribed to. If you stick with the defaulThu, 18 Jul 2013 19:40:32 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/07/17/wrong-battle/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/07/17/wrong-battle/After a month’s worth of prism related revelations and discussions, something just clicked inside me and I realized that we are fighting the wrong battle by trying to take extraordinary measures in an effort to protect our data. We are fighting against an all-powerful organization that: has a virtuaWed, 17 Jul 2013 12:18:27 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/06/30/how-to-use-the-internet-in-a-post-prism-world/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/06/30/how-to-use-the-internet-in-a-post-prism-world/How does a typical person use the internet? Either you live in the Googleverse, where you use the best search engine in the world to search for everything that is important and personal to you, most likely while being logged in to your google account so that you get a more curated and intelligent seSun, 30 Jun 2013 21:21:53 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/06/19/vps-review-digitalocean/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/06/19/vps-review-digitalocean/I usually don’t review VPS or hosting services, they stopped becoming a novelty a long time ago. But DigitalOcean is a bit different and I only started using them little over a month ago. You see I have tried quite a few hosting solutions in the last 12 years or so. I started out with […]Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:30:16 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/05/26/quick-tip-how-to-check-if-your-wordpress-site-is-under-bruteforce-attack/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/05/26/quick-tip-how-to-check-if-your-wordpress-site-is-under-bruteforce-attack/There has been a lot of talks recently about WordPress sites being under brute-force attacks on admin login form by dumb bots. It’s mostly because a default WordPress install doesn’t have a lockout feature for the wrong password, you will need a plugin for that. I use Wordfence to lock out/ban any ISun, 26 May 2013 13:07:04 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/05/21/flickr-1tb-storage/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/05/21/flickr-1tb-storage/Like everyone else my first reaction to Flickr’s new storage plan was jaw-dropping happiness. Flickr was not only the first web service that I actually paid for, but I also spent an insane amount of time uploading, organizing my collection of images. Flickr used to be awesome until Yahoo stopped worTue, 21 May 2013 19:23:07 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/05/16/host-your-own-dropbox-like-cloud-backup-service-under-5-minutes/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/05/16/host-your-own-dropbox-like-cloud-backup-service-under-5-minutes/Over the years, we have all come to love and depend on dropbox for its seamless and no-nonsense sync and backup feature. Even now after all these years when there are so many cloud services out there with bigger storages backed by big companies, I would still recommend dropbox as a first choice. HavThu, 16 May 2013 15:35:00 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/05/12/quick-tip-how-to-change-nginx-server-header-using-varnish/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/05/12/quick-tip-how-to-change-nginx-server-header-using-varnish/This is how my custom server header looks like (Server:R2D2) – curl -I www.slashgeek.net HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/html Last-Modified: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT Expires: Sun, 12 May 2013 02:55:30 GMT Pragma: public Cache-Control: max-age=3600, public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate ESun, 12 May 2013 08:38:18 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/03/21/i-am-not-even-mad-that-google-canceled-reader/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/03/21/i-am-not-even-mad-that-google-canceled-reader/There seems to be a lot of misplaced anger towards Google for deciding to cancel Reader. I say misplaced because if you think about it there isn’t any reason to be angry about it; here is why:Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:52:59 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/03/08/everything-is-a-copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/03/08/everything-is-a-copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy/Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal. – Steve Jobs   Anyone who spent a reasonable amount of time with both OS X and Ubuntu with its recent iteration of design changes (aka Unity), can see without doubt the OS X design features and elements that have been heavily copied by (or helped to inspire) UFri, 08 Mar 2013 22:13:05 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/03/03/howto-setup-vpn-in-under-5-minutes/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/03/03/howto-setup-vpn-in-under-5-minutes/I don’t like the idea of relying on VPN specific services for your VPN needs. I think if you do care about your privacy you should self-host it; considering how cheap VPN servers are these day and how easy setting up a VPN server is. LowEndServers have many options and so many locations that you […]Sun, 03 Mar 2013 20:55:51 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/26/google-glass-privacy/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/26/google-glass-privacy/Hear me out, before you nerd out and get all defensive about Google Glass. Are you ok with the government installing cameras everywhere in major cities of the world? Initially, most of you probably had a serious problem with this, but eventually, you have come to accept the world where you are on caTue, 26 Feb 2013 18:35:29 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/23/never-had-a-virus/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/23/never-had-a-virus/I can safely say in the last 12 years or so I never had a computer virus (or malware) on my Windows computer. It’s not because I have some über anti-virus or setup that prevents viruses from being installed. It’s mostly due to how I modified my behavior as a computer user that prevented doing […]Sat, 23 Feb 2013 19:35:14 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/20/low-end-box/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/20/low-end-box/During my freelance sysadmin days, my biggest annoyance was clients renting really high-end dedicated servers for sites that were serving a measly few thousand users a month. To call these servers an overkill would be an understatement. My first instinct was to try to explain to my clients how much Wed, 20 Feb 2013 21:51:56 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/17/self-host-everything/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/17/self-host-everything/In today’s world, there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about your privacy and your data. We live in a time when the government is fighting to have unrestricted access to your digital life. You no longer have privacy or even exclusive rights to your own data, if you are using a free platform,Sun, 17 Feb 2013 20:02:38 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/16/use-webkit/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/16/use-webkit/As a web developer, I know the pains of trying to work around kinks to support all variations of all major browsers to have a unified look, feel, and performance. Even though today the top browsers do a better job at supporting and implementing new web-standards it’s far from a perfect situation. SoSat, 16 Feb 2013 21:07:39 GMThttps://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/13/year-of-linux-desktop/https://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/13/year-of-linux-desktop/You have probably read it a thousand times how year X will the year of the Linux desktop, only to know deep down that this will be repeated next year by some tech blog/pundit with some news on how awesome Linux is doing in the desktop market because of some obscure government program of buying […]Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:18:51 GMT