The Whitelist Was On. The Server Still Needed an Access Plan.
What a Pterodactyl-managed Minecraft server taught me about separating player authorization, account authentication, network exposure, and panel access.
Eldritch IT Field Notes
Practical technical writing from work that actually happened.
Practical write-ups from the field covering networking, Windows, Linux, homelabs, infrastructure, and the process of building a managed IT company from the ground up.
The Definitive Guide to Linux File Permissions for Self-Hosted Services (2026 Edition)
A practical, security-conscious guide to Linux ownership, modes, groups, ACLs, umask, Docker UID and GID mapping, network shares, SELinux, AppArmor, and permission troubleshooting.
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Evergreen practical guides
Build a homelab from scratch Plan roles, storage, networking, recovery, and validation before buying more hardware. Fix hostname resolution across UniFi VLANs Trace DNS, routing, and segmentation when names work on one network but fail on another. Deploy Jellyfin on Ubuntu with Docker Build a reproducible media-server deployment with storage, networking, and validation in mind. Design private remote access with Tailscale Use identity, grants, routing, host firewalls, and recovery paths instead of simply opening ports. Diagnose an empty-looking library Separate application symptoms from mount, path, and storage-layer failures. Choose repair, reset, or reinstall Decide when Windows recovery is still trustworthy and when rebuilding is the safer boundary.
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The Service Existed. Swarm Had Nowhere to Run It.
Diagnosing a Docker Swarm service that exists but has no running tasks.
The Browser Opened the Game. Storage Stopped It.
Why a browser-based game that loads successfully can still fail before play, and how to test the real storage budget instead of blaming the network.
The Build Passed. Production Did Not Move.
What a green GitHub build and a failed Cloudflare deployment taught me about separating source validation, deployment credentials, and the live site.