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Gregory Gibson on How He Manages GNU/Linux Servers Remotely
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Make Use Of ☛ I replaced all my server email alerts with push notifications — I actually read them now
My off-grid power setup always had plenty of ways to warn me when something needed attention or when I was about to run out of power. The problem was that, among the various MPPT charge controllers and the battery monitors from a variety of different companies, I had notifications coming in from every direction.
I needed power alerts that behaved like actual alerts, so I connected my home operations server to ntfy, wrote out some scripts to handle them, and started receiving the alerts immediately, straight to my phone with ntfy.
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Make Use Of ☛ I stopped SSHing into my server just to run scripts — this free tool put them all behind one button
I like SSH, but I don’t love having to open it and remember a username and password just to run the same boring commands over and over. That little annoyance is the reason I started this project in the first place.
I have a few servers in my homelab, but one in particular needs constant babysitting, disk space checks, backups, and updates because it controls home automation. These jobs aren’t difficult, and some of them are automated. But the small, annoying manual tasks just feel too small to warrant an SSH session.
OliveTin fixed this in a really simple way. It let me turn my own Bash scripts into browser buttons I could access and click at any time on my home network. After installing OliveTin natively on my Debian home-ops server, I turned the inconvenience of yet another secure SSH session into proper tools.