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  • Docker 25, and the build cache backend I finally read about

    Cache mounts are local to the builder, which on a hosted CI runner means they do nothing at all. A registry cache backend moves the layer cache off…

  • A systemd timer instead of a cron entry, at last

    A cron entry that had been failing silently for six weeks, and a timer that would have said so. Persistent=true runs a missed occurrence after a reboot, which…

  • A cache with persistence turned on to hide a design problem

    Turning on persistence so a restart would stop losing data, which is treating the symptom of data that should not have been there. Persistence on a cache is…

  • Compose v1 reaches end of life, and the alias that hid it

    A shell alias mapping docker-compose to docker compose, added in 2021, which meant nobody noticed the old binary was still installed and still being used by two scripts.…

  • Two caches with the same key and different meanings

    Two services writing settings:41, one meaning customer 41 and one meaning tenant 41, against the same instance. Separate logical databases on one instance are the other answer and…

  • The alert that woke the wrong person for a year

    A routing rule sending database alerts to a person who left the database team in 2023. A personal integration key survives a role change invisibly, because nothing about…

  • The service we merged back

    Two services extracted in 2021, a team of four maintaining four pipelines, and forty-one of forty-four releases touching both.

  • Percentiles per consumer, not per endpoint

    An endpoint with a healthy p95 and one consumer for whom it was consistently slow. Aggregating across consumers averages away exactly the case that generates support tickets, and…

  • Rate limiting per key rather than per address

    A limit keyed on the client address, and four integrators behind one corporate gateway sharing a quota. Keying on the credential is the only fair unit when consumers…

  • A shadowing month with the expert silent

    A month where the person who knows everything sat next to the person who does not and was not allowed to speak. The silence is the mechanism —…