VPS & Servers

It depends what is running, but free -h on an existing server and a look at what each extra service costs gets you a real answer fast.

Creating a swap file with fallocate and mkswap, making it permanent in fstab, and why swap is a cushion rather than a substitute for RAM.

Measuring your own server with sysbench, dd and iperf3, and why comparing today against last month matters more than any single number.

SSH is how you control a VPS from the command line, and setting it up properly the first time saves you a lot of trouble later.

Why root should not be your daily account, and the exact commands to create a proper sudo user in its place on any major distribution.

Pointing a domain at your VPS is DNS plus a matching web server config — here is both halves, and how to check they agree.

Installing Nginx or Apache on your VPS, checking it serves a page, and where each one keeps its site configuration afterwards.

What a control panel actually buys you on a VPS, the main options, and why it has to go on a genuinely clean, freshly built server.

Installing a free Let’s Encrypt certificate with certbot, and making sure it actually renews itself before it expires.

Installing Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB and PHP together on a fresh VPS, and confirming each piece actually talks to the others.

How screen and tmux keep a command running on your VPS after you disconnect, and the handful of shortcuts you actually need to use them.

Updating a VPS safely, handling the reboots that kernel updates require, and automating security patches so this stops being a manual chore.

Building the new server first and testing it privately before you touch DNS is what keeps this move from causing any visible downtime.

Where Linux keeps its logs, the commands to actually read them, and how to filter thousands of lines down to the one that matters.

The right systemctl commands to restart or reload a Linux service, and why checking its status straight afterwards is not optional.

The concrete steps that actually matter for securing a fresh Linux server, in the order that keeps you from locking yourself out.

The commands that show you exactly what is consuming CPU, memory and disk on a VPS, and how to identify the process responsible.

A simple, scripted backup covering files and databases, scheduled with cron and copied off the server, plus how to actually test it.

The five-field crontab syntax explained properly, plus the logging habit that stops a failed scheduled job from failing silently.

Installing Fail2ban to automatically block repeated failed logins, configured safely so you do not end up banning yourself.

How to enable and configure a firewall on your VPS with ufw or firewalld, without accidentally shutting yourself out over SSH.

The order of operations for a fresh VPS, from your first SSH login through to a locked-down server ready for a website.

Setting the hostname is one command; reverse DNS has to be set by whoever owns the IP address, which for a VPS means asking your host.

Copying files to and from a VPS with scp, sftp and rsync, and connecting a graphical tool like FileZilla when a terminal is not what you want.