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Eliminating JavaScript cold starts on AWS Lambda
Porffor can run on Lambda now!
Topics /
Infrastructure & DevOps
The most popular blog posts about infrastructure & devops on Hacker News. 170 posts.
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Making a micro Linux distro (2023)
A guide on building a simple Linux distribution from scratch. Detailed guide on building the kernel and the init process. Finally, a little distribution is built with u-root that is capable of connecting to the Internet.
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Build a Container Image from Scratch
Build a Container Image from Scratch — Danish Prakash
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Economics of Orbital vs. Terrestrial Data Centers
Before we get nerd sniped by the shiny engineering details, ask the only question that matters. Why compute in orbit? Why should a watt or a flop 250 miles up be more valuable than one on the surface? What advantage justifies moving something as mundane as matrix multiplication into LEO?
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Netboot Windows 11 with iSCSI and iPXE
Notes on installing and netbooting Windows 11 over iSCSI
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Static Web Hosting on the Intel N150
Compare static web hosting performance on an Intel N150 using the same nginx.conf across FreeBSD jails, SmartOS zones, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux, focusing on HTTP vs HTTPS and TLS CPU usage.
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Take this on-call rotation and shove it
At some companies, it is expected that certain engineers will serve as part of a formal on-call rotation. On paper, this seems like a reasonable way to ensure the reliability of the product. In practice, it is a miserable burden and you probably won't even get paid for it.
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Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)
Why FreeBSD instead of Linux for home servers? Exploring ZFS, jails, stability, and the reasons behind choosing FreeBSD for a home infrastructure.
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AWS S3 SDK breaks its compatible services
Achieving Data Freedom Through Open Source and Rust
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Nix Derivation Madness
I’ve written a bit about Nix and I still face moments where foundational aspects of the package system confounds and surprises me.
102
It's five grand a day to miss our S3 exit
We're spending just shy of $1.5 million/year on AWS S3 at the moment to host files for Basecamp, HEY, and everything else. The only way we were able to get the pricing that low was by signing a four-year contract. That contract expires this summer, June 30, so that's our departure date for the final leg of our cloud…
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How Container Filesystem Works: Building a Docker-Like Container from Scratch
Learn how Linux containers are built from the ground up. Starting with the mount namespace and a root filesystem, see why PID, cgroup, UTS, and network namespaces naturally follow - and how this foundation makes concepts like bind mounts, volumes, and persistence in Docker or Kubernetes much easier to grasp.
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Linux kernel cgroups writeback high CPU troubleshooting
Read on to learn how we used network packet captures and BPF to debug web server performance, ultimately uncovering a Linux kernel performance issue. This investigation was a collaboration between myself and my colleagues.
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More than DNS: Learnings from the 14 hour AWS outage
A thorough review of a major cloud outage.
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A Guide for WireGuard VPN Setup with Pi-Hole Adblock and Unbound DNS
I’ve used Mullvad as my VPN provider for a few years. Their service is good, they provide keys for 5 devices, rely on the Wireguard protocol, and offer alternative configurations as well. Despite that, my needs have changed and I wanted to be able to have granular control over DNS queries and the ability to connect my…
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Replacing cron jobs with a centralized task scheduler
A brief description of our task scheduling system
109
Serving 200M requests per day with a CGI-bin
In the early 2000s, we used to write a lot of CGI programs. This was the primary way to make websites dynamic at the time. These CGI programs were usually written in Perl, but sometimes in C to increase performance. The CGI mechanism is conceptually simple but powerful. When the web server receives an incoming request…
110
I'm Done with Ubuntu
A few busted upgrades and the heavy-handed push of a software packaging solution has ruined Ubuntu for me.
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The Canva outage: another tale of saturation and resilience
Today’s public incident writeup comes courtesy of Brendan Humphries, the CTO of Canva. Like so many other incidents that came before, this is another tale of saturation, where the failure mod…
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Yoke: Infrastructure as code, but actually
Infrastructure as code, but actually
113
The Limits of NTP Accuracy on Linux
Lately I’ve been trying to find (and understand) the limits of time syncing between Linux systems. How accurate can you get? What does it take to get that? And what things can easily add measurable amounts of time error? After most of a month (!), I’m starting to understand things. This is kind of a follow-on to a…
114
Monitoring My Homelab, Simply
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that they’re essential for large fleets of services with fast-changing software and teams of oncallers working around the clock to understand the complex ways that complex systems fail… but my stuff doesn’t change that often, failures are mundane and low-scope, and I’m the only person…
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Tinycolor supply chain attack post-mortem
Lessons learned from becoming the unexpected face of a npm supply-chain attack.
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How much Anthropic and Cursor spend on Amazon Web Services
So, I originally planned for this to be on my premium newsletter, but decided it was better to publish on my free one so that you could all enjoy it. If you liked it, please consider subscribing to support my work. Here’s $10 off the first year of annual.
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How I like to install NixOS (declaratively)
For one of my network storage PC builds, I was looking for an alternative to Flatcar Container Linux and tried out NixOS again (after an almost 10 year break). There are many ways to install NixOS, and in this article I will outline how I like to install NixOS on physical hardware or virtual machines: over the network…
119
A brief look at FreeBSD
Recently I've been playing around with FreeBSD in a virtual machine. The reason for this is that (if all goes well) some time in December my new Framework laptop will arrive, replacing my current X1 Carbon that is starting to show signs of old age (e.g. a keyboard where certain keys don't always work). Framework in…
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Heartbeats in Distributed Systems
In distributed systems, one of the fundamental challenges is knowing whether a node or service is alive and functioning properly. Unlike monolithic applications, where everything runs in a single process, distributed systems span multiple machines, networks, and data centers. This becomes even glaring when the nodes…