# Posts

## Self-hosting mail the hard way (Postfix + Dovecot + PostfixAdmin + Roundcube, and zero Mailcow)

If you came here scared of mail servers: good. That means you’re paying attention. This post is for you. I assume you can SSH into a Linux box and copy-paste carefully. I do not assume you already know what an MX record is, why port 587 exists, or why Cloudflare’s orange cloud and SMTP should never meet at a party. I wanted real email on my own machine — mail.alipourimjourneys.ir — without buying a “smart” appliance and without installing one of those giant all-in-one stacks. Mailcow is excellent. Stalwart is excellent. I still said no. Sometimes the point is to feel each moving part with your own hands, even if that means spending an evening arguing with nginx about whether a certificate belongs to mail or to Matrix. (Spoiler: when in doubt on this box, it was Matrix.) ...

## A TU Wien CTF where Sysops Klaus left the keys in the cron job

LFI on a meme gallery, a localhost-only password reset service, a world-writable cron script, and way too many rabbit holes — plus a bonus on the intended log poisoning path I griefed myself out of.

## H3ll0 Fr1end

Hello friends. I’m back. It’s been… let’s say, a shit show. My beloved country was attacked by two extremely strong foreign armies in the midst of a revolution. A revolution I deemed i woulld succeed, but now I’m so so confused. The royalists, the radical fascist rights, gathered behind the former King of Iran. A fucking ruthless dictator. Someone who created the scariest of spider webs in Iran, the effect of which layed it’s shadow over the country for decades. It’s funny how his father (I’m talking about the grandfather of this guy) was a traitor, and a ruthless dictator of his own. The difference was that he actually loved the country and although ruled with an iron fist, he actually tried to make the country great. Now let me be honest, the guy was an idiot for many many reasons, siding with the allies by providing them infrastructure at the cost of his own people’s lives, and then selling people’s food to make money off of England was just utterly messed up. But this guy (the son of the former King) is probably the most incompetence creature on this world. So badly incompetence that no mentally sane foreign leader even sees the guy. With all of the money given to him throughout the years, it’s not clean what the fuck his been up to. His eyes blinded be revenge, and his head dreaming of ruling a country that he clearly does not “own” makes him the best candidate for exploitation. And he has shown this very well. ...

## Nextcloud on a Raspberry Pi, Fronted by a Tiny VPS — Nginx Reverse Proxy, Trusted Proxies, and Basic Auth for Jellyfin

I didn’t “move Nextcloud to the cloud”. I moved the front door to a VPS… and kept the house on my Raspberry Pi. 😄 This post documents the setup I ended up with: A public VPS (host: funbox) running Nginx + Let’s Encrypt A private Raspberry Pi (host: iot-hub) running Docker services (Nextcloud, Jellyfin, …) A private backhaul using Tailscale (the 100.x.y.z network) A correct Nextcloud reverse-proxy configuration (trusted_domains, trusted_proxies, and overwrite values) A pragmatic security layer for media: Basic Auth at Nginx for Jellyfin (in addition to Jellyfin’s own login) I’m writing this as a “future me” note and a “copy-paste friendly” guide. ...

## Blackout

Ever since the latest Internet/communication blackout in Iran, I’ve been trying to get access to my box inside of the network. I went so far as to beg people to ssh into my box and deploy something that would give me a backdoor to my box, but little to no luck came out of it. Although Arvancloud opened their panel briefly, giving me access to do some digging, I got stuck at putting some sort of binary client on my box from their online panel. I tried to b64 the binary file and copy‑paste it via clipboard, and this caused their panel to crash (or it was just bad timing) — they haven’t opened it again. ...

## 2025 Highlight

I just experienced my best two weeks of this cursed year. I went to 39c3 first, did 31.25h of Engel work, got to meet a bunch of extremely cool people, met the people I had made friends with from last year, and made new friends. No new contacts though. :) Not only I got to see a lot of cool people, computers, projects, but also I attended many many cool talks and learned a lot. I also participated in a challenge that after solving I got a T-Shirt for. I also got myself a T-Shirt for my Engel work. ...

## Seeing the "Light"

I have a strong hunch that I made it. I beat my MDD. I’m finally happy! I’m happy for being single, for being who I am, for doing what I do. I can cherish every moment of my life now. Currently I’m sitting in Hamburg’s CCH, being an Angel in disguise. ;D I could not land myself any shifts before 1600, so I have to sit around and wait, and blog. ...

## Movie Night Over the Internet: Jellyfin + Tailscale on a Raspberry Pi 4

Ok. Let me tell you the why first. So…. I was turning from one side to the other on my bed, going through YouTube. The thing that I used to silence my pain, to let the time pass, and to forget. But it didn’t hit the same anymore. I was bored. Eternal boredom. Then the loneliness came back. It’s funny how you can be in the middle of dozens of people, i.e., not alone, but still feel lonely. Anyway. I though to myself “let’t message one of my two best friends”, We eventually went into a google meet, talked and talked, and decided to watch a movie together at the same time. I told him I still have my Raspberry Pi lying around, let me put it to good use. Few hours passed, and I was ready. Here is what happened in those few hours. ...

## How am I doing?

This constant feeling of how people think about me, how they view me, what is happening with them is killing me. I’m interpretting every little move, every action, every response as me being in trouble. Not only is it exhausting, but also it’s draining me. Draining me of happiness, being in pursuit of happyness. Idk what is wrong with me. Idk why I can’t let go. I don’t know why I need so much closure. Idk. I really don’t. What I know is that I’m mentally dealing with too much. Too much for a little boy like me. Someone who got conditional love throughout his life. Someone who never experienced being loved. Someone who was trained to work hard to be loved. To sacrifice to be loved. ...

## Setting Boundries

I was watching this video the other day. It’s an interesting video imo. This is something I’ve been also dealing in my therapy sessions lately too. Why am I the way I am? Why do I case so much about what others think? Why do I keep giving my best to them, though they literally do not give the slightest of shit about me unless they need something from me? Funnily enough, my therapist believes I do this as a survival mechanism. That it all comes from my childhood. Being born in a family with a high achiever dad, and brother, and being pushed to become better. Being compared to whoever was better than me in any regards all the time. The toxicity of this stayed with me throughout my life. I had to always be the best. I had to always try harder. I had to earn other’s respect. Naturally that evolved into me becoming a people please. A so called “nice person”. I’ve even been made fun of with those words. ...

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