#Powershell
Silent Overwrites on Upload: Three File Copying Traps
Upload two files with the same name together, and the second silently overwrites the first. No error, no failing exit code, and every page still returns 200. The English page just becomes a Thai page. These are three traps that let file copying cause damage without any warning.
Build APM on Windows: Apache + PHP 8.4 + MariaDB Series Index
A 7-part series on compiling Apache 2.4.69, PHP 8.4.27 and MariaDB 11.8.9 from source on Windows 11, so when PHP releases a security patch, I can change the version number in one file and rebuild within a day. This page covers the contents, overview, time, disk space and three-command shortcut.
Build APM on Windows, Part 7: Deploy, Run, and Apply Security Patches
The final part of the series on building Apache + PHP + MariaDB on Windows. Install into C:\APM, start and test it for the first time, open it to the LAN safely, walk through six real bugs (PidFile, MariaDB plugins, the DB port, the ASLR 500, paths with spaces and brackets), and cover the procedure for the next security release.
Build APM on Windows Part 6: PHP 8.4 with redis and imagick
Part 6 of the series on building Apache + PHP + MariaDB on Windows from source walks through 30-php.ps1 step by step, from php-sdk and the full configure command to copying DLLs and testing that JIT, redis and imagick actually work.
Build APM on Windows, Part 5: Compile ImageMagick 7 for PHP imagick
Part 5 of the Build APM on Windows series compiles ImageMagick 7.1.2-34 and around 40 delegate libraries from source with the official toolchain, including the channel mask patch from 64 to 32 that lets imagick build, and why HEIC cannot be written
Build APM on Windows, Part 4: Compile MariaDB 11.8 LTS
Part 4 of the Build APM on Windows series walks through compiling MariaDB 11.8.9 from source with CMake and Ninja, from preparing the tools and running the script to testing on port 3399 and explaining why collation must be pinned to utf8mb4_unicode_ci
Build APM on Windows, Part 3: Apache httpd 2.4.69 with CMake
Build APR, APR-util, httpd 2.4.69 and mod_fcgid with CMake and Ninja on Windows. Explain why each option is set, use dumpbin to find the DLLs needed beside httpd.exe, prevent links to debug DLLs, and test the config with httpd -t.
Build APM on Windows, Part 2: Fetch Source and Libs with vcpkg
Steps 1 and 2 of building Apache yourself on Windows. Read 00-fetch.ps1 and 10-deps-vcpkg.ps1 line by line, verify the sha256 of every source archive, then have vcpkg build OpenSSL 3.5 LTS and 8 other libs from source, with commands to check the results at every step.
Build APM on Windows, Part 1: Prepare Tools and Unpack the Build Kit
The first part of a series on building Apache + PHP 8.4 + MariaDB yourself on Windows. Install Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools with the required components, Git, CMake, Ninja and PowerShell 7, configure Defender, unpack the build kit into C:\apm-build, then examine the folders, versions.json and the lib.ps1 and build-all.ps1 scripts line by line.
A 25-Hour Power Outage Left Scheduled Jobs Missing
The machine running my automated jobs lost power three times in three days, with the longest outage lasting 25 hours. When it came back, I found that jobs scheduled directly through Task Scheduler had skipped their runs entirely, while jobs managed by a dispatcher that checked the time itself had all caught up. This article covers the setting to enable, what to avoid during recovery, and the traps that led me to misread the status.
Driving AutoCAD from PowerShell via COM — Scripted Drafting
AutoCAD exposes COM for scripting just like Excel. Connect to the running instance with New-Object, then draw lines, circles, text, and 3D boxes, create layers, add dimensions, and save files entirely from PowerShell, with four traps I hit myself and learned never to repeat.
Automating Remote Windows Tasks with SSH + Task Scheduler
Move heavy workloads to a more powerful machine over SSH, then automate them with schtasks — with pitfalls that cost me real time, from landing in PowerShell 5 instead of bash over ssh, to backslashes getting swallowed when writing .bat files, to file transfers hanging until I switched to plink
Read a Toledo RS-232 Scale over Bluetooth with PowerShell
Connect a TWT-01 digital scale with only an RS-232 port to a PC through a BT578 Bluetooth adapter, then read its weight in real time with PowerShell — from Bluetooth pairing and finding the COM port by MAC address to decoding 18-byte Toledo Continuous frames and the null-byte and scale auto-sleep pitfalls I encountered in practice.
Network-as-code on MikroTik RouterOS
A network-as-code approach for MikroTik — save /export output as a file, strip secrets with a sanitize script before sharing, split it into sections, then generate configs for multiple sites from Jinja2 templates + one set of variables