A practical guide to creating, managing, and tuning swap files and swap partitions on Linux using mkswap, swapon, and swapoff, with real commands and common troubleshooting fixes.Continue reading...

I recently reinstalled my main desktop from scratch: Debian testing via Kali underneath (read first before judging) and XFCE on top. One of the reasons I keep coming back to XFCE is its built-in power management.Continue reading...

Learn how to tune Linux kernel parameters using sysctl and /proc/sys for better network throughput, memory management, file I/O, and server security. Includes a ready-to-use baseline config.Continue reading...

The /proc filesystem is a live window into the Linux kernel: process state, memory layout, CPU counters, network stats, and writable kernel tunables, all accessible with nothing but cat and grep. This guide walks through the most useful files and per-process directories with practical examples.Conti...

A practical guide to DNS resolution on Linux: how /etc/resolv.conf, systemd-resolved, and dig work together, and how to troubleshoot common nameserver failures.Continue reading...

Password-based SSH login is a liability. This guide walks through generating SSH key pairs with ssh-keygen, deploying public keys, disabling password authentication, and managing multiple keys cleanly with ~/.ssh/config.Continue reading...

The nc command (netcat) is a lightweight but surprisingly powerful networking tool for port testing, file transfers, banner grabbing, and connectivity debugging. This practical guide covers the flags and real-world usage patterns that Linux users and sysadmins actually reach for.Continue reading...

If you've ever looked at your server and wondered why it's using swap even though plenty of RAM is available, you're not alone. This is a common scenario on Linux systems, and it can impact performance if not addressed.Continue reading...

Hard links and soft links in Linux both use the ln command but behave very differently. This practical guide explains exactly how each works, when to use which, and how to avoid the common pitfalls that catch even experienced sysadmins.Continue reading...

Servers give you warnings before they fail. Most sysadmins performing Linux server monitoring miss them because they're watching the wrong numbers. The metrics that actually matter are one level deeper: iowait instead of CPU percentage, active swap paging instead of memory usage, inode counts instea...

Linux is a powerful and versatile operating system that can be used for a wide range of purposes. For many system administrators, the command line interface is the primary way to interact with the system.Continue reading...

In 2023 I published 50 mind-blowing ways AI will reshape our world in 2024. This started as a personal exercise. I wanted to pin down what AI was truly capable of, so I could better understand how far it might reach and what was genuinely possible in the near future.Continue reading...

Update (one year later): The verdict is in. I went with the TP-Link SG2210XMP-M2, and after a full year in the rack it's been running flawlessly: fanless, multigig, VLANs and not a single issue.Continue reading...

This article is inspired by our LinuxCommunity.io forum discussion thread (thanks to users @tmick and @shybry747 for the feedback). Let's walk through what Podman is and how to use it as a Docker alternative on Linux.Continue reading...

Last week I walked into an empty 5 × 4 ft storage room. By the end of the week, that blank space held a fully functional network core designed to keep a small professional office online through power cuts, ISP hiccups, and future growth.Continue reading...

The watch command runs any Linux command repeatedly at a set interval and displays the output full-screen, making it one of the quickest ways to monitor live system activity without writing a script. This guide covers all the key options with practical examples for real sysadmin use cases.Continue r...

I’ll admit, I hesitated a bit before writing this post. The whole point of this linuxblog.io and linuxcommunity.io forum is to bring together like-minded Linux users and professionals so we can troubleshoot, share ideas, and learn from one another.Continue reading...

Nginx TLS tuning won't fix a slow application, but it does cut handshake overhead and improve connection reuse, which shaves milliseconds off every HTTPS request.Continue reading...

tmpfs lets you mount a filesystem entirely in RAM. Here is how Linux already uses it, how to create your own mounts, and where it actually makes sense to use one.Continue reading...

Every so often, something surfaces in the LinuxCommunity.io forums that deserves a wider audience. Generally it is a question, a solved problem, or a quick tip.Continue reading...

A practical guide to Linux user and group management using useradd, usermod, userdel, groupadd, gpasswd, and chage. Covers real-world examples, common mistakes, service accounts, and safe account removal.Continue reading...

Let's take a quick look at how best to set up PHP-FPM for high throughput, low latency, and more stable CPU and memory use. By default, most setups have PHP-FPM's PM (process manager) string set to dynamic and there's also the common advice to use ondemand if you suffer from available memory issues....

Embarking on the quest to find the ideal home office, home lab or small business firewall device is akin to navigating a jungle, but let's narrow it down by setting the budget to under $300 USD.Continue reading...

Looking for the best Linux distro (distribution) to enhance your desktop or laptop experience? This article will guide you to what, I believe, are the best Linux distros for beginner, experienced, and expert users.Continue reading...

Two network interfaces are better than one. With Linux network bonding (also known as NIC bonding or link aggregation), you can combine multiple NICs into a single logical interface, gaining either increased throughput, failover redundancy, or both.Continue reading...

Fail2ban watches your log files and automatically bans IPs that repeatedly fail authentication, protecting your Linux server from brute-force attacks on SSH, web servers, and more. This guide covers installation, jail configuration, testing, and practical tuning to get real protection instead of jus...

A practical guide to nmap on Linux covering host discovery, port and service scanning, OS detection, NSE scripts, output formats, and real-world command combinations sysadmins actually use.Continue reading...

A practical guide to Linux log files: where they live, how to read and search them with tail, grep, and journalctl, how to manage log rotation, and a real-world troubleshooting workflow.Continue reading...

After twenty years on the Linux desktop, more than a dozen distros, multiple desktop environments, a seven-year tiling window manager phase, and one detour through whatever I thought of as the stable answer at the time, I'm finally in a noticeably more comfortable place than ever before.Continue rea...

Learn how to write, manage, and troubleshoot systemd service unit files on Linux. From basic service definitions to hardening options, restart policies, timers, and real-world debugging techniques.Continue reading...