So there I was, figuring out how to set up all my social media for branded automated posting. Pinterest requires a privacy policy link to do certain things. No problem. I have that. Or at least I thought I did...
When I went to my site to grab the privacy policy link, it returned with some strange error I had never seen before. It was like 1003 or something like that. Complete and utter failure. Shocked, I reached for sentry (which I had been leaning on, of course) free tier used up. No more uptime monitoring enabled. I got too cozy. I go to the server, it's on and running, and appears functional. After some quick digging, I discovered it was wifi. The server was still running on wifi. I knew that, but I never experienced a disaster like this first hand.
Why is it on wifi, you ask? The original intention was for poking around, learning, and other activities not intended for a production server. 😂 it has snowballed into something with a tiny heartbeat. ****
Back to the why: it's sitting next to the switch that I have yet to configure. 2 switches actually. A juniper and a cisco. I am at a crossroads. The juniper would be free, but I was studying cisco. I started studying networking stuff but I've been very busy. And im not putting my desktop on wifi.
Want some sprinkles? The server is on the opposite side of the house, on a different floor, with lots of structure in between. I have 2 cat6a cables running down. We have about 25+ things that need internet, in that room alone. Have fun thinking about that.
Damnit! 😂 I wasn't ready yet! My plans have now changed. Tomorrow I attempt a network configuration. No one to hold my hand and walk me through the process here. Certain panic. Wish me luck.
My server that I have been working so hard on had an unplanned 2 hour outage while I updated it in a panic. This must be what it feels like to work in cybersecurity. Panic panic everywhere.
I have an actual big server (its old) but I haven't got it fully configured, and also I wanted my switch up. Its a big fat cycle of excuses. I can't continue like this. 😂😂😂
I guess I have to be a baby system admin now. This was not a part of my original plan. I swear I spend more time fixing problems (that I created) than anything else.
I fully updated my tiny server since it was already down, and turned off power saving. Its not enough, but if I'm lucky, I'll get a switch working tomorrow... maybe?
I also learned I need a redirect page for when my server is down for maintenence. Basic stuff if you think about it. I am but a single junior dev, don't shoot. XD
Side note: As I was explaining this to my significant other, first, his jaw dropped. Then, he busted out laughing because he said he was planning on "play with the wifi tomorrow." Then my jaw dropped.
Disasters.
Undoubtedly this should make for an interesting story, if nothing else.
Top comments (12)
This takes me back to 2015-2016 when I was learning Cisco and taking it very seriously. At one point I even considered becoming a network engineer, but my love for software engineering won out in the end. Still, digging into stuff like this gives you knowledge that maybe 1 or 2 percent of developers have.
Good stuff! 👏
That 1-2% figure is so true. Most devs never touch a switch config, and honestly, that's fine — until something breaks and suddenly you're the only person in the room who knows what a VLAN is.
Unfortunately, I know about vlans! 😂
that's awesome! Ah! Yes I am borderline considering it as well. But idk. I'm getting in it too deep with my tiny shop. We will have to see how this goes. 😂 all the more reason to get it to work! 😂
"I got too cozy" is the most honest line I've ever read in a postmortem 😂 If that error was Cloudflare's 1033, that's the tunnel connector losing its link, which fits a server dropping off wifi. One cheap win while the switches wait: a free external uptime check (UptimeRobot and Better Stack both have free tiers) that's completely separate from your Sentry quota, so the next outage pings you before Pinterest does. Good luck with the network config. Juniper vs Cisco is a tough one, but free usually wins!
With the server still appearing healthy locally, I'd make the next check an external one: request a real page from a phone with Wi-Fi disabled, both before and after the switch change. A local health check can miss the exact broken path your visitors use. Since the Sentry free tier stopped monitoring, a small independent uptime check would also distinguish an application failure from loss of reachability. Keep the network change and server update separate so a failed check has fewer possible causes.
Definitely set up a maintenance page. Even a simple static HTML file on a separate cheap host is better than a raw error. It makes you look professional even when everything is on fire.
Yes! That's exactly what I realized amid the chaos! 😂✨️
The line that hit me: "I swear I spend more time fixing problems (that I created) than anything else."
This is the most honest sentence ever written by a developer. The "temporary learning server" that accidentally gets a tiny heartbeat and becomes a production e-commerce store is a rite of passage.
I'm 43 days into learning Python and writing tutorials, and I already do this. I'll write a "quick script" to automate one thing, and suddenly my entire workflow depends on it.
The fact that you have to configure a Juniper and a Cisco switch just to fix a Wi-Fi bottleneck gives me anxiety. But the absolute best part of this post is your partner saying they were planning to "play with the Wi-Fi tomorrow." That is comedic gold.
Good luck with the network configuration tomorrow. May the packets flow freely and the uptime be ever in your favor. 🚀
The best postmortems leave behind a cheaper next failure. I’d capture the recovery path as a tiny runbook: what to check first, what access works without the primary network, and which warning would have caught the issue before it became an outage.
This is a useful warning about a dev server quietly becoming production. One concrete habit that would help next time is to check from outside your own network before you start fixing anything. A quick request from a phone hotspot tells you whether the server is down or only your home wifi is hiding it, and that saves a lot of guessing.
The privacy policy link being the thing that exposed the outage is such a good example of a tiny server quietly becoming important 😅 I’d be tempted to move those small static pages onto hosting that doesn’t depend on the home network, then leave the server experiments free to break while learning. Is the policy page the only outside dependency, or have other integrations started relying on it too?