I recently picked up an older HP 880 gaming desktop and noticed something odd: it came with a 32GB NVMe drive pre-installed, and no other storage device was present. Naturally, I tried installing Windows directly onto the 32GB NVMe, but the installer couldn’t detect it at all. That was my first clue something was off. To proceed, I installed a standard hard drive and successfully installed Windows there. Interestingly, during the installation process, the system still didn’t show the 32GB NVMe as a usable drive. So what’s that mysterious 32GB module actually doing? That’s when I noticed something impressive—this system boots incredibly fast. I’m aRead More →

This was my first visit to Harpers Ferry. Before coming, I tried to find some brief information about the area, but most of it wasn’t very helpful. So, I decided to write this short note to share my experience: What’s the main spot to visit?The highlight of the trip was the overlook point I marked on the map. From there, you get a great view of the bridge and can walk across it toward Maryland Heights. It’s definitely worth seeing. Parking OptionsThere are three main parking areas: Parking 1 – Visitor Center:Located at the main entrance, this lot has plenty of spaces. You can alsoRead More →

mkdir /opt/splunkforwarderuseradd -m splunk cd /opt/splunkforwarder wget -O splunkforwarder-9.4.2-e9664af3d956-linux-amd64.deb “https://download.splunk.com/products/universalforwarder/releases/9.4.2/linux/splunkforwarder-9.4.2-e9664af3d956-linux-amd64.deb”dpkg -i splunkforwarder-9.4.2-e9664af3d956-linux-amd64.deb chown -R splunk:splunk /opt/splunkforwarder /opt/splunkforwarder/bin/splunk start cd etc/system/local/nano outputs.conf nano inputs.conf sudo systemctl restart SplunkForwarder.service sudo systemctl status SplunkForwarder.serviceRead More →

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In the past, hosting a website from your own home required a fair amount of technical know-how and came with significant security risks. Traditional setups involved several key steps: Configuring your home router to forward a port to your internal server. Ensuring you had a static IP address. Purchasing and installing an SSL certificate for secure HTTPS access. While effective, this approach exposed your home network to the internet. Opening ports on your router made your physical location traceable and increased the risk of cyberattacks. A Safer, Simpler Way: Cloudflare Zero Trust Cloudflare Zero Trust has transformed how individuals can host services from their homesRead More →

I just bought a Canon 5D Mark IV. I had 5D Mark III before, here are new features that i like on Mark IV Touch screen More pixels (30.3 vs 24) 4K Videos vs HD Video GPS LCD seems a nicer Photos seems betterRead More →

We mostly care about the cpu/memory/storage metrics for mysql. I found another interesting metrics, it’s the aborted clients. What is it? It’s the number of the client is unable to authenticate to your servers. Why does it matter? There are a few reason why the client is unable to connect: your server is reaching the maximum connections, the user is using wrong password. If this value is showing, it means we are not fully operational. It’s good for proactive action on this.Read More →

We recently got a spike in the requests, all the requests are coming from Alibaba IP address space. We are not sure what the purpose of this request is, the user agent does not identify what tool it is. The request is also coming from many IP addresses, blocking individual IP is challenging as there are so many IPs. After checking some properties of the IP, we see it’s coming from the AS number. Luckily Cloudflare WAF supports the rule condition based on AS number, applying the new rule based on the AS number helped us mitigated the issue in a few minutes. Cloudflare hasRead More →