... we've done a few rescues at Freelock Computing lately. I just stumbled across a nice article with some in-depth troubleshooting tips over at Linux Magazine.
Rescuing damaged Server installs
About the Author
John Locke is the lead developer and founder of Freelock, LLC. In addition to being a proficient web developer, he is an experienced technical writer, network administrator, and all around problem solver. He has worked with computers since 1984, and currently advises small businesses on open source software.
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🕑Jul 21, 2026 🖋John Locke
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We Patched wp2shell in 4 Hours. On a Friday Afternoon.
On July 17, WordPress shipped an emergency security release for a vulnerability chain now being called wp2shell.
🕑Jul 09, 2026 🖋John Locke
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Tempting Fate: What Happened When One of Our "Protected" Sites Got Hacked
A real client site got hacked and lost 35GB of files overnight. Here's how we diagnosed it, recovered in a few hours, and what we changed after.
🕑May 18, 2026 🖋John Locke
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The Rules Have Changed: Security in the Age of AI-Assisted Attacks
Security is getting dramatically harder and more expensive. AI is simultaneously driving an explosion in vulnerability discovery and weaponizing the exploits that follow. The question for every organization with anything online is no longer whether to invest in resilience — it's whether that investment is already in place before the next incident arrives.
🕑Aug 22, 2023 🖋John Locke
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Rate Limiting an aggressive bot in Nginx
High load isn't necessarily an emergency, but it may be a heads-up before a site noticeably slows down. Sometimes there are weird spikes that just go away, but sometimes this is an indication of a Denial of Service.
🕑Jun 21, 2018 🖋John Locke
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This is Why You Need Another Backup
At 12:27pm, our alerts started firing. Multiple ones -- website down, server down, secondary monitoring -- one of our client's servers had completely disappeared off the Internet.
🕑Mar 29, 2018 🖋John Locke
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Drupalgeddon2: Should I worry about critical security updates?
No, you should not. You should let us worry about them, and go back to your business.
Seriously, we're getting questions from all kinds of people about whether this matters. I'm a bit surprised that there is any question about that. Would you be concerned if your top salesperson was selling for somebody else? If your cashiers were jotting down credit card numbers when they charged a card? If your office became a well-known spot for illicit drug or gun dealers? If your office had a bunch of scammers squatting and running a pyramid scheme? If your confidential client information could be revealed as easily as using a bic pen on an old Kryptonite lock?
We've seen some variation of every single one of those scenarios. And all of them are possible with a remote code execution flaw in a web application, like yesterday's Drupal security vulnerability.
And yet people still
🕑Jan 15, 2018 🖋John Locke
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Meltdown notes
The Meltdown vulnerability leaked out into public news a full week before patches were available for many distributions. When patches did become available, sometimes the patch caused further trouble.
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