#Windows
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.
Two Critical PHP RCE Flaws (php2shell): Patch Today
CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 are PHP RCE vulnerabilities with a CVSS score of 9.2 and public exploits already available. They affect every machine using PHP to handle web requests. The patched versions are 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, and 8.2.35. This note covers version checks, updates on Debian, RHEL, DirectAdmin, Docker, and Windows, and temporary settings while waiting for patches.
VM Sees the Dongle but Has No Internet Without a Windows ECM Driver
After passing a USB LTE dongle through to a Windows VM, the system sees the device but no network adapter appears. The cause is neither the SIM nor port passthrough, but the dongle exposing a CDC ECM interface that Windows has no built-in driver for, along with storage-mode pitfalls and dhclient overwriting the host's resolv.conf.
Reading ID Cards from the Web with a Localhost Agent
Browsers cannot access smart card readers directly. A workable approach is to write a small agent that opens a port on localhost and let the web page call it. This article covers secure contexts, CORS preflight, port conflicts with other agents, PC/SC in SHARED mode, decoding TIS-620 manually, and the day antivirus flagged the program as a backdoor.
Sending Automated Job Files to Telegram and the Bot API's 50 MB Limit
Set up a small local service that takes files from scripts and sends them to me on Telegram, with outbound delivery only, no polling, and no incoming commands, along with the actual Bot API limits to know before writing it, including 50 MB per file, images over 10 MB that must be sent as documents, and the Thai text trap in curl on Windows.
CDP Still Responds but Commands Fail After Chrome Updates Itself
I run several automation jobs on one machine that need a real browser, and ran into two problems at once — jobs fighting over tabs and getting each other's results, and Chrome overwriting its own files during an update while the process was still running, leaving the port responsive but Runtime.evaluate unusable. This article covers how I isolate jobs, detect the failure, and repair it automatically.
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.
Automated Image Uploads Stopped for 4 Days: ssh Chosen by PATH
Write subprocess.run(["ssh", ...]) and leave the system to choose the binary from the caller's PATH. One day the caller changes, and the binary changes with it. File transfers fail silently for 4 days while reporting success every time. This article covers how I tracked it down, a helper that probes the actual binary before using it, and a completeness check before declaring the job done.
Borrowing a VLAN for Windows Tools That Need the Same L2
Many manufacturers' device discovery tools use broadcasts that cannot cross L3, so connecting over a VPN still leaves devices invisible. A solution that leaves switch ports alone is to put a small Windows VM on Proxmox with its interface directly in that VLAN, with pitfalls around vlan-aware bridges, a full thin pool breaking other VMs, and virtio leaving Windows without a network adapter after installation.
Every Layer Reported Success While the Output Was Garbage
In one day, four layers of the same automated pipeline failed together, but every layer reported success without a single error line. The person who caught it was a user who said the site was not updating. These are the rules I wrote afterward so that failing stages could speak up for themselves.
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
Building a Single-Screen Ping Monitor with C++, ImGui and DirectX 11
A small app that pings every device on the network at once and puts the results on one screen. It sends ICMP directly through iphlpapi without calling ping.exe, runs one thread per host, communicates with the UI through std::atomic, renders with Dear ImGui on DirectX 11, and builds with CMake and a single PowerShell script.
Android Dev on MIUI/HyperOS — adb Traps on Windows
adb is not broken, but Git Bash mangles /sdcard paths, PowerShell produces 0-byte screenshots, MIUI/HyperOS blocks the first installation, and here-strings swallow backslashes when generating PHP code — real traps I hit while developing an Android app on Windows, with commands that actually work
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.
Writing Scripts on Windows for Linux — Two File Cleanup Traps
Writing helper scripts on Windows and using scp to run them on Linux is routine work, but two things keep catching me out — d:\ paths embedded in scripts turn into strange filenames in /tmp that trigger the file monitor, and token/payload files get left behind on the server. This article lays out my rules for avoiding these mistakes.
Create .ppk Files for plink/pscp on Windows Without Opening puttygen
puttygen.exe on Windows is GUI-only and cannot batch-convert OpenSSH to .ppk (it returns unrecognised option) — this article writes PPK v3 files directly with Python, including the hard-to-find HMAC-SHA-256 MAC formula, ready to use with plink/pscp/WinSCP.
USB in WSL2 with usbipd-win — Real Hardware for Linux on Windows
WSL2 cannot see USB devices because it is a VM without a USB controller — usbipd-win passes devices from Windows directly to the WSL kernel with 3 commands, list/bind/attach, plus lessons from actual use: attachments drop when unplugged, the CRLF trap, and USB modems taking over the default route
Using Claude to Upgrade Proxmox 8 to 9 and Rebuild Windows VMs
A real case using VS Code + Claude to upgrade an entire Proxmox cluster from 8 to 9, then delete and rebuild all Windows VMs for VDI without ever SSHing into a host myself. I have laid out the commands and scripts Claude generated during the actual work as steps that a person or AI can read and run again.
Driving SketchUp with Claude Code, Part 1 — uv and PyNite Setup
Start a series on using Claude Code to draw 3D steel structures in SketchUp and run FEA calculations. This first part covers setup only, configuring Claude permissions, installing uv, and creating a conda env with PyNite.
Build a Desktop AI Server with WSL2 + Ollama + OpenClaw
A record of building a home AI server from scratch, starting with Windows 11 IoT, installing WSL2 + Ubuntu, setting up Ollama to run LLMs on two GPUs, then adding multiple OpenClaw instances through systemd, covering drivers, custom Modelfiles, user isolation, and benchmarks