Backend & databases
I spend a lot of time working somewhere between the application and the database — building APIs, tracing weird issues, looking at slow queries, and figuring out why something that worked yesterday suddenly doesn't.
Hi, I'm Ilham.
I like understanding how things work behind the scenes — not just the part I'm working on, but how the whole thing fits together. Most of what I write here started as something I had to fix.
What I work on
Servers & infrastructure
Most of my infrastructure work starts with a Linux server. I run services in containers, deal with networking and reverse proxies, move things between servers, and try to keep everything simple enough that I can still understand it months later.
Automation
If I notice myself doing the same thing over and over, I'll probably try to automate it. Sometimes that means a proper tool, sometimes it's just a small script or a cron job that saves me from doing the boring part again.
Things I've been figuring out
Notes from projects, experiments, and problems I've spent time working through.
- Long-running jobs should not depend on my SSH connection
One of the more annoying parts of working on servers is waiting for something that takes a long time. A database dump. A restore. Compressing a large directory. Moving data with rsync.
- When /home Is Full: Why LVM Makes Storage Expansion Easier
Most storage expansion problems I run into start with something simple: df -h Imagine I see this: Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root--lv 50G 20G 30G 40% / /dev/sda2 …
- Why the comments live on GitHub
This site is still new, and comments were the last thing I set up. I went with Disqus because it is the obvious choice: one <script> tag, and replies work without me running a database or a …
- Running real services on a small VPS
A lot of what looks like a scaling problem is really a maintenance problem. On a small VPS with a gigabyte or two of RAM you can run a surprising amount — as long as you keep the number of moving …
- Why this site is a static site
When people hear “blog” they often picture a database, a login screen, and a dashboard full of plugins. You can absolutely run it that way. But if all you are publishing is words, a static …
Let's talk
Working on something similar, or want to discuss a post? Feel free to reach out.