IT

One of my latest projects was a fully dockerized name server infrastructure based on PowerDNS: one master and two slaves — one in the same subnet and the second running in a cloud on a basic virtual machine. Why PowerDNS? Because I needed an API, a proper admin-friendly web interface, user management, and LDAP integration. PowerDNS fully matched my requirements. Why Docker? Because I wanted some level of automation and IaC — Docker fits nicely in the middle, where you have several configs and docker-compose files fully describing the container configuration.

Some time ago I faced a serious challenge: migrating a large number of similar websites from DirectAdmin to ISPConfig with maximum automation. The hosting platform was changed, and doing everything manually simply wasn’t an option. To solve this, I wrote a better CLI wrapper for ISPConfig that focuses on usability while reusing the default API functions underneath: ispconfig-cli

You have some infrastructure in Russia and want to move it elsewhere, for example to Europe. Currently this can be problematic. During recent tests I noticed that Russia limits long network sessions: any session longer than about one minute starts to be throttled to around 100 kB/s. This may not apply to every destination, but I tested several major European providers and also Belarus as a proxy. Belarus was even slower, around 50 kB/s.

Python reminds me of PHP many years ago, when multiple incompatible versions could exist on one server. Do you need another version? The best solution back then was a new server, because any update or installation could break the entire global environment. Half a year after the “Sunsetting Python 2”, major distributions still continue to install Python 2 by default, and it becomes a challenge not to replace the default version after some update or after installing a new package.

This was the first time I used FreeRadius. This program reminds me of Postfix — a similarly complicated and powerful tool. Only one big difference: very poor documentation and not enough examples. In the mailing lists there are many questions without answers from FreeRadius gurus. Here I provide examples of how I solved some problems or where I spent too much time…

New project — new challenge. For this project I got UAP-AC-Pro, UAP-AC-Lite and UAP-Outdoor+. How to install and configure them you can easily find on the Ubiquiti website. This post is about the hard way — when you don't buy the full ecosystem and need a custom solution.

Work From Home (WFH)… Not a big problem for IT. Almost everything I need I can do without any discomfort. A good understanding of how to work remotely came during the first quarantine period; in Lithuania it was in summer. Good weather, my own house, lots of forests around… Who cares about COVID-19 — I just stayed with my family and spent my time as usual.