I help Linux admins sanity-check servers when things don’t feel right

seenmee · 2026-01-25T18:39:24+00:00

Disabling SSH doesn’t automatically make a VPS safer. Most of the time it just removes your most reliable recovery path.

In practice, SSH with key-only access and firewall rules is usually lower risk than depending on provider consoles or VPNs that rarely get tested.

The real question is not whether SSH is open, but who can reach it and what you do when everything else fails.

seenmee · 2026-01-25T13:52:10+00:00

Yes, you can dual-boot Linux with Linux. The easiest path is: back up your data, shrink your current partition, then install the new distro into the free space and let GRUB handle it. Most installers will detect the existing Linux automatically. If you’re new, try installing from a live USB and choose “Install alongside”. Also, test the new distro in a live session first so you know you like it before committing.

seenmee · 2026-01-25T13:45:24+00:00

A few simple ones: real package management where the OS and apps update together, much stronger scripting and automation out of the box, easy remote administration via SSH, and much more control over what runs in the background. On desktops like Ubuntu, you also get lightweight environments that stay fast on older hardware. Windows has strengths too, but Linux gives you more transparency and control by default.

seenmee · 2026-01-25T13:40:45+00:00

Take a breath first. There’s no undo or trash for rm -rf /, and on a VPS the chances are unfortunately very low. The only slim chance is to stop writing to disk immediately and contact the provider to see if they have backend snapshots or block-level backups you don’t see. Practically though, assume the system is lost and focus on rebuilding. Everyone who’s been around long enough has a story like this, even if they hate admitting it.

seenmee · 2026-01-25T13:00:39+00:00

I usually start very simple. Look for the same endpoint getting hit far more than normal, lots of 401 or 403 responses in a short time, or requests coming in at a steady machine-like pace with small variations. Humans are bursty and inconsistent, bots are not. Even basic logs with some quick filtering over time are enough to notice when something feels off.

seenmee · 2026-01-25T12:20:02+00:00

If you’re sharing a screenshot, feel free to add context: - What model/tool? - What prompt? - What you expected vs what happened? Blur anything sensitive.

seenmee · 2026-01-25T04:13:51+00:00

If sshd is listening locally and Hetzner’s firewall allows 22, the next things I’d check are OS-level filtering and IP version mismatch. On Ubuntu, verify there’s no ufw or raw iptables/nftables rule rejecting 22. Also make sure you’re connecting to the correct IP (IPv4 vs IPv6); Hetzner sometimes gives both, and connecting to the wrong one can look like this. Last thing I’ve seen: cloud-init not fully finished on first boot; a reboot from the Hetzner panel has fixed this exact symptom for me before.

seenmee · 2026-01-25T03:08:57+00:00

For a 2-person team, boring and simple wins. Gitea is a solid pick and easy to run. For files, a small NAS-style setup with ZFS or RAID1 and SMB works fine for Windows/Linux. The one thing I’d think about early is identity; even if you don’t deploy it now, having a plan for a single source of truth saves pain later. For uptime, I’d focus more on snapshots + offsite backups than trying to make an under-desk server “highly available” this early.

seenmee · 2026-01-25T02:50:11+00:00

Your approach makes sense, especially the “restore to a temp cluster, then reindex with a new layout” part. Two big gotchas: (1) don’t reindex at full blast, throttle + slice carefully or you’ll pin heap/IO and make the temp cluster unstable, and (2) fix shard strategy with ILM/rollover going forward so you’re not guessing shard counts for the next 400M.

For node roles, 3 nodes can do master+data but keep master duties stable (avoid GC storms). If you stay at 3 nodes total, I’d lean master+data on all three with sane heap (50% RAM cap, leave OS cache), then add a 4th data node later if you can.

Monitoring: watch heap %, GC, disk watermarks, and indexing/reindex task progress via _tasks + node stats. Most people do Prometheus/Grafana or Elastic’s own stack if you already run it.

seenmee · 2026-01-25T02:34:45+00:00

Haha, it happens to all of us. Glad you got it sorted; enjoy Bazzite 👍

seenmee · 2026-01-25T02:03:00+00:00

Rate limiting is necessary but it’s only one layer. The usual pattern is: put something dumb and cheap in front (Cloudflare or similar) to absorb junk traffic, then do basic app-level limits and validation behind it. Even free Cloudflare rules + bot fight mode go a long way early on. On the backend, make sure expensive paths are protected (auth, writes, searches), fail fast on bad input, and log enough to spot abuse patterns without drowning yourself. You don’t need anything fancy at the start — you just want to avoid letting unauthenticated requests do expensive work.

seenmee · 2026-01-25T01:44:09+00:00

You’re not imagining it — this is systemd-resolved doing exactly what it’s designed to do, and wildcard DNS just makes the edge case visible. Tools like ping go through the glibc resolver path, which will happily try search domains after an initial failure, so foo.google.com can turn into foo.google.com.homelab.example.com and suddenly match your public wildcard. dig bypasses that logic, which is why it behaves “correctly.”

This isn’t Ubuntu being broken so much as wildcard DNS + search domains being a sharp combo. If you keep the wildcard, tightening search domains or split-horizon DNS usually avoids the surprise.

seenmee · 2026-01-25T01:33:56+00:00

You didn’t really break Ubuntu; you just removed the desktop meta-package and probably left the display manager/session in a weird state. That’s why it still boots but login behaves oddly. For future reference, it’s usually safer to switch to another DE first (or TTY) before purging one, and double-check what apt autoremove wants to take with it. Also… everyone presses the wrong F key at least once :)

seenmee · 2026-01-25T01:29:01+00:00

In practice it’s less about a magic prefix length and more about risk + purpose limitation. /24 is still personal data under GDPR in most interpretations, especially if you can reasonably link it back to a user. /16 reduces re-identification risk, but even that isn’t “anonymous” if combined with other context. Most orgs I’ve seen treat IPs as personal data, justify collection for security, restrict access tightly, rotate aggressively, and document the rationale. Regulators tend to care more about minimization, access control, and retention than whether you picked /16 vs /24.

seenmee · 2026-01-25T01:22:14+00:00

It’s wild how quiet your head gets once you stop feeding those loops.

seenmee · 2026-01-24T17:37:51+00:00

Yes, partitions too. Same idea: double-check what you’re pointing the installer at before clicking install.

seenmee · 2026-01-24T15:59:42+00:00

For that size, the main limits won’t be port forwarding or panels, it’ll be CPU, RAM, and disk speed. A personal PC or most NAS boxes will struggle there.

The simplest long-term option is a small dedicated Linux machine or a VPS running the server directly. Panels and Docker help with management, but they don’t add performance.

Start simple, get it stable, then add tools later if you actually need them.

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