Rich Gibbs.
Rich Gibbs / Notes from the work

Field notebook.

Practical, opinionated notes on Linux server security, AWS hygiene, and indie-founder operations from Rich Gibbs.

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Earlier field notes

6 preceding entries · search this page

  1. 01

    I had 80,000 unread emails. Here's the cleanup playbook (no apps, no OAuth)

    A working, non-SaaS playbook for clearing tens of thousands of old unread emails from a personal Gmail. Survey first, delete second. The 30-day Trash window is your safety net.

  2. 02

    Cloudflare Email Routing for indie founders: the 10-minute support@ setup

    Stop paying $6/user/month for a Workspace seat to forward [documentation support mailbox]. Cloudflare Email Routing does the same job for free, in ten minutes, with one caveat you need to know about.

  3. 03

    SPF, DKIM, DMARC for indie founders: the 20-minute checklist

    If your password resets and receipts keep landing in spam, your server is fine and your email DNS probably isn't. Here is the boring, working playbook to fix it in one sitting.

  4. 04

    AWS IMDSv2 Migration Without Breaking Things

    A practical, indie-founder guide to migrating EC2 instances from IMDSv1 to IMDSv2 without breaking SDKs, containers, kubelet, or the ECS agent.

  5. 05

    The Indie Founder's VPS Security 101

    A practical, no-nonsense guide for solo founders running one Linux VPS. Lock the doors, watch the right things, and skip the security theater.

  6. 06

    Ubuntu/Debian EC2 hardening checklist (2026)

    A practical 2026 hardening checklist for Ubuntu and Debian EC2 instances: SSH, UFW, IMDSv2, updates, logging, backups, and Docker basics.