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Longhorn Backup and Restore

Article breaks down using Longhorn (version 1.7) for backups, self-hosting, and recovery. It’s for seasoned DevOps and SysAdmin folks who like doing things themselves. You’ll find a step-by-step guide on setting up and restoring backups with Longhorn, Velero, and GitOps. The goal is to show you a tried-and-true setup for getting your backups and restores working smoothly.

Oauth Token via CLI

In today’s world of distributed systems and microservices, security has become more critical than ever. One common approach to securing these systems is through the use of OpenID Connect (OIDC), an identity layer built on top of the OAuth 2.0 protocol. However, integrating OIDC into command-line interface (CLI) applications can be challenging due to the complexity of OIDC flows.

In this short article there is a use-case of using oauth2c to obtain token via CLI. Keycloak is used as primary refernce of IDP, but any other OIDC complient solutions should work in the same way.

Portable Stack

Once upon a time, I was sitting in front of my laptop with an IDE where hundreds of different Kubernetes manifests were opened and I was thinking: “how come I am in this moment? I need to add a new service, but to do it, I have to keep in my mind zillions of details and configure dozens of files instead promised by marketing ’little changes’”. It wasn’t my first frustrating time: I have always been thinking that the current practice of how to set up an environment is slightly more complicated than needed for micro/small businesses especially for pet projects.

How to get SSL certificates on Synology

I have been working with Synology Disk Station products for SOHO for a long time now. It’s a costly NAS but worth it because of: the combination of high-quality software (DSM) and hardware, and it is friendly for newcomers and professionals alike.

By default, Synology offers access to the NAS UI via HTTPS or HTTP protocol.

While HTTP is the simplest option, HTTPS (if done properly) is much more secure. However, the self-signed certificate, provided by Synology is not good neither in terms of security or user experience (ie: RED alerts in browsers and etc).

In general, in DSM 7 you may issue a certificate by two methods:

  • request a free certificate from Let’s Encrypt
  • import already existing certificate

The first option is available only in case you exposed your Synology to the public internet which might not be the best idea in terms of security.

In this article, I would like to share an approach on how to secure a connection to the Synology by issuing a valid (!) certificate without exposing NAS to the outer world.