Running your own VPN server used to mean wrestling with OpenVPN's certificate authority workflow or IPsec's famously fiddly configuration stanzas. WireGuard was built to sidestep both problems: it's a VPN protocol implemented as a small codebase that the Linux kernel has shipped as a built-in module since late 2019, …

Two decisions determine how a MariaDB install turns out on a fresh Ubuntu VPS: which repository the packages come from, and whether the post-install hardening script actually gets run. Skip either one and you end up with a database that's either years out of date or wide open by default. This guide covers both paths — …

A stock Ubuntu install ships an ancient Docker package under a different name entirely — docker.io — if it ships one at all, and that package trails months or years behind what Docker actually maintains. The reliable path on a VPS is Docker's own apt repository, which tracks Docker Engine releases directly and gets you …

A VPS you stood up six months ago and rarely log into is the most dangerous machine you own. It is still serving traffic, still listening on its open ports, and still running whatever package versions it had the day you walked away — including the ones with public exploits published last week. Patch hygiene is the …