Maria Daniel Deepak

Category: Random/Personal

  • Goodbye Droplet. Hello 👋 Nanode!

    I made the decision to self-host my WordPress blog four years ago. I was reluctant at first. But being a developer, I wanted to expand my server administration skills.

    Digital Ocean was popular in the cloud web hosting territory back then and their documentation and affordability were icing on the cake. I spun up a server with my limited knowledge and things were pretty good.

    Four years later, here I’m sharing my experience with Digital Ocean. In these four years, my servers crashed twice. Because of the way I had set up my files, I lost all my data. I wouldn’t blame Digital Ocean for the loss of data.

    However, I got pretty uncomfortable the second time I lost the data. The urge to move to a different cloud web hosting was stronger than ever. So I started looking for alternatives.

    I remembered using Linode at work a couple of years ago. I never experienced an issue with their reliability. Without second thought, I opted for Linode.

    Making the switch

    I chose to go with Linode’s starter plan — Nanode. Because I know I can expand later. Moving to Linode also meant revisiting my server administration skills. But this time, I had a couple of things in mind —

    1. Setup backs to prevent losing database and files
    2. Tighten up server security

    Setting up a server this time wasn’t as complex as I did four years ago. I matured enough to be able to know a bit more of the server-side stuff. Not only did I set up the server (Nanode) but also attached a block storage to my Nanode for data backups.

    I documented everything that I did while setting up using Obsidian, a cross-platform note taking app. A couple of weeks passed by since I made the switch. The backups make me feel safe allowing me to sleep peacefully.

    Today, I’m grateful for the Almighty for the life I live.

  • Blogs I Enjoy Reading

    1. Konstantin Kovshenin
    2. Darius Foroux
    3. Zell Liew
    4. Sudar Muthu
    5. Remy Sharp
    6. Addy Osmani

  • My Software Development Tool Kit

    Recently I switched to using ThinkPad E15 laptop and had to install all the applications I use on a daily basis. Ubuntu is my go to operating system.

    To cut back time thinking to come up with the list of all applications I need, I thought of listing ’em down in a blog post. I’m falling in love in Ubuntu everyday I use it.

    Cerebral debugger

    Download Cerebral debugger (snap package) and install using the snap command.

    sudo snap install /path/to/my-snap.snap --dangerous

    Composer

    Download and install Composer globally.

    php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php -r "if (hash_file('sha384', 'composer-setup.php') === '906a84df04cea2aa72f40b5f787e49f22d4c2f19492ac310e8cba5b96ac8b64115ac402c8cd292b8a03482574915d1a8') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"
    sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

    cURL

    To download Oh My Zsh, cURL is required. Install cURL using the following command.

    sudo apt install curl

    Git

    Download and install Git using the following command.

    sudo apt install git

    KSnip

    Install KSnip using Snap.

    sudo snap install ksnip

    Local

    Download and Install Lhttps://localwp.com/ocal.

    sudo apt install ./local-6.x.x-linux.deb

    Obsidian

    Download and Install Obsidian.

    sudo snap install --dangerous obsidian_0.x.x_amd64.snap

    Peek

    Install Peek.

    sudo apt install peek

    Slack

    Install Slack using Snap.

    sudo snap install slack --classic

    VS Code

    Install VS Code using Snap.

    sudo snap install code --classic

    Zoom Client

    Install VS Code using Snap.

    sudo snap install zoom-client

    Zsh

    Install Zsh.

    sudo apt install zsh

    Oh My Zsh

    Oh My Zsh is downloaded using cURL. Since cURL is already installed, we could download Oh My Zsh.

    sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
  • Hello world!

    Hello world!

    Yay! I got my blog up and running.

    I, recently, crashed my Digital Ocean droplet by running a reboot command in the terminal losing all my blog’s data.

    I’ve been using Digital Ocean for fours years. The recent crash is the second bad experience with Digital Ocean and I decided to switch to using Nanode.

    I learnt the lesson the hard way — save database backups in a different server other than the actual web server.

    The unfortunate event forced me to brush up my server administration skills, which I wouldn’t have done otherwise. You see, inconvenience is sometimes good.

    I intend to share what I learn in this blog. By sharing, I only help my future self. If you benefit from this blog in any way, I would be glad to know. Do share your words in the comments.

    Susan Garrett, a renowned dog trainer, inspired me to end blog posts with a gratitude note.

    So, here I go — I’m grateful for my mentors who made me what I’m today.

    Image Credit

    1. Photo by Vladislav Klapin on Unsplash