Categories
Posts in Operations
Incident response, oncall, backups, and recovery runbooks.
- 15 min read
86 CPU spikes in 24 hours: a multi-cause cascade postmortem
A cPanel server fired 86 ChkServd CPU alerts in one day. Four root causes were amplifying each other. The triage, the order of fixes, and the lessons.
- 8 min read
Hardening every WordPress site on cPanel in one loop
A field-tested bash loop that walks every cPanel user, finds every WordPress install, and applies an idempotent hardening checklist with weekly drift detection.
- 6 min read
When you have to suspend a WooCommerce client: anatomy
A WooCommerce client burned 40-60% CPU on a shared cPanel box for 48 hours, unreachable. The decision tree, the suspension, and the conversation after.
- 14 min read
Patchman activation breaks PHP sites: memory_limit gotcha
Patchman daily scans on cPanel push large WordPress sites past the PHP memory_limit and trigger 500s. Diagnostic flow, two-part fix, pre-activation audit.
- 8 min read
The corrupted WordPress db.php dropin nobody warned you of
WordPress says the DB connection is down but MySQL is fine, and only one site is affected. The cause is almost always a broken db.php dropin in wp-content.
- 14 min read
Locked out of cPanel SSH: VNC, iptables, and the way back in
How to recover from a cPanel SSH lockout using your provider's VNC console, iptables flush, and CSF restore, plus the audit that prevents the next one.
- 6 min read
When the client changes DNS without telling you first
Mail dies, AutoSSL stops renewing, the homepage shows a registrar parking page. A short field guide to diagnosing and fixing a silent DNS handover.
- 12 min read
cPanel disk full at 96 percent: the backup retention trap
A postmortem on a cPanel /home at 96 percent, why 7 backup sets ate 331GB, the safe-deletion order, and the WHM retention that stops the cascade.
- 12 min read
MySQL OOM on cPanel: diagnosing innodb_buffer_pool_size
A 2026 postmortem on MySQL OOM on cPanel: ChkServd alerts, the InnoDB buffer pool error, the math behind safe sizing, and the fix flow we ship.
- 2 min read
Sample incident: MariaDB OOM kill on a shared cPanel node
A walkthrough of one Saturday-morning MySQL crash on a cPanel server: what alerted, what we ran, and the InnoDB buffer-pool change that closed the ticket.
- 2 min read
Disable WP-Cron across every WordPress site on cPanel
An idempotent bash script that disables WP-Cron across every WordPress install on a cPanel server and replaces it with staggered system cron entries.
- 2 min read
Find SSH attacker subnets in /var/log/secure: a quickref
One-liner to surface the top attacking /24 subnets in /var/log/secure during an SSH brute-force wave, plus per-username and per-minute variations.
- 2 min read
MariaDB slow log permissions on cPanel: the quick reference
Fix MariaDB slow_log Permission denied on cPanel after a MariaDB updater run, plus a weekly cron that re-asserts ownership before the next reset.
- 3 min read
ChkServd alert field guide: reading cPanel service alerts
Decode the chkservd alert subject lines and bodies cPanel sends when a service flaps, with notes on common false positives and how to tune sensitivity.
- 1 min read
Welcome to the sguard.ai blog
Notes from the on-call queue: how we triage, diagnose, and fix the cPanel incidents that hit shared hosting nodes. Written for the operators.