Upgrading GitLab from 16.10 to 17.0 Without Skipping the Required Step

This draft turns a real GitLab upgrade note into a cleaner walkthrough focused on the upgrade path, the intermediate required version, and the service checks I used after each step.

Working Around a Payment API CORS Problem with a Server-Side Proxy

This draft turns a raw CORS debugging note into a cleaner explanation of the real issue: browser-based cross-origin restrictions and the practical workaround of routing requests through a server-side proxy.

Wiping or Formatting a USB Disk from WSL 2

This draft shows how I used WSL 2 to attach a physical Windows disk, inspect it from Linux, wipe it with shred, and cleanly unmount it afterward.

Fixing a Cloudflared Tunnel by Reauthenticating and Recreating Credentials

This draft captures a common cloudflared repair pattern: upgrade the binary, refresh the login material, and recreate the tunnel credentials rather than guessing at partially broken state.

Fixing Thumbor SSL Renewal on an Aging Certbot Install

This draft captures a practical SSL troubleshooting case where renewals looked broken on an older Thumbor host, with the key details coming from the renewal logs and a manual run.

Installing Longhorn on a Kubernetes Cluster and Passing the Environment Checks

This draft captures the part of a Longhorn installation that usually matters most in practice: make sure the node dependencies are in place, enable iscsid, run the environment check script, fix the obvious blockers, and only then install the chart.

Restarting a Vault Container in a Staging Environment

This draft preserves a practical staging note for restarting a Vault service, checking logs, and bouncing a dependent infrastructure container when secrets-related plumbing gets out of sync.

Setting Up a Cloudflared Tunnel for a Cluster

This draft captures the practical shape of a cluster-side Cloudflare tunnel setup: install cloudflared, register the service, and use DNS-backed certificate workflows where needed.

Preparing Canical Storage Nodes for a Ceph Cluster

This draft keeps the preparation side of a Ceph build intact: identify the right storage nodes, inspect the disk inventory carefully, wipe only the intended devices, and make sure the nodes have the network path they need before the actual Ceph deployment begins.

Compacting a WSL 2 `ext4.vhdx` Disk

This draft captures the practical sequence for terminating a WSL 2 distribution and compacting its backing ext4.vhdx file through diskpart.