The Small Business Server Stack

Small and medium businesses are in a difficult position concerning technology and computers.
Most of you are in survival mode to be able to operate.

  • You cannot afford expensive hardware equipment.
  • You cannot subscribe to enterprise cloud solutions.
  • You cannot hire the top talent for 24/7.

Probably an acquaintance or relative helps you – or a small company suggested by them.

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Gitea – Ansible Installer Role

Automation and configuration management are not just about comfort.
They provide security, auditability and operational freedom.

For this reason Tom’s IT Cafe provides an Ansible role that:

  1. Downloads and installs the Gitea Linux binary
  2. Sets up a system service (as a non-root user)
  3. Sets up PostgreSQL (or SQLite for lightweight setups)
  4. Optionally sets up a reverse proxy with Certbot or self-signed keys
  5. Highly configurable through variables

The role focuses on a small, auditable code base with strong security.

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Protecting The Wire – Semaphore Behind SSL Proxy

Mission Brief

Plain text communication is loud. It’s bleeding data.
Prying eyes can see every bit in the wire.

You have to isolate the backend – the Semaphore UI and MySQL containers stay locked down. Unreachable for the external work.
Open a tiny hole on the stronghold to the world – the frontend is an NginX SSL proxy.

You use:

  • Podman pod for network and container isolation
  • The Semaphore and MySQL containers without exposing them to the world
  • An NginX proxy container with SSL
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