About Ops Journal

Field notes on Linux, backups, containers and monitoring, written by an engineer who runs the systems described here. Commands are run before they are written down.

This site is a working notebook. Every article starts as a problem that came up on a machine that was actually running: a backup that had never been restored, a timer that fired twice, a disk that filled overnight. What is published here is the write-up that should have existed at the time.

What this site covers

• Linux operations — systemd, cron, logs, disk pressure.
• Backups and recovery — including the restore drills that prove a backup is real.
• Containers — volumes, data locality, what survives a rebuild.
• Monitoring — health checks that fit on one server.

Editorial approach

Commands shown here were run before they were written down, and output is quoted as it appeared. Where a claim depends on a specific version or distribution, the version is named. Where something is a judgement call rather than a fact, it is described as one.

Articles are written by the site's maintainer and reviewed before publication. Nothing on this site is assembled by copying text from other sources, and corrections are welcome — see the contact page.

Independence

This site is funded by display advertising. Advertisers have no input into what is written or which tools are recommended.