# Postmortem: Server Downtime on August 24th

## Incident Overview

**Start Time:** August 24th, 00:08 UTC  
**End Time:** August 24th, 03:10 UTC  

The server experienced a significant outage beginning at 00:08 UTC, which lasted until 03:10 UTC, totaling approximately 3 hours and 2 minutes of downtime.

## Impact

- Inaccessible services hosted on the affected server
- Disruption of user access and potential data transfer issues
- System stability was compromised due to proxy management failure

## Cause

The primary cause of the outage was identified as a failure in the **Nginx Proxy Manager**. Specifically, it broke due to issues with **Let's Encrypt**-based certificates. The broken certificates caused the proxy manager to malfunction, leading to the entire system becoming inaccessible.

*Note:* The exact root cause remains uncertain, but the failure of certificate renewal or validation appears to be a critical factor.

## Timeline

| Time (UTC) | Event |
|------------|---------|
| 00:08      | Proxy manager failure detected; system becomes inaccessible |
| ~00:08 - 02:40 | Attempted to deploy alternative proxy solutions (Traefik, Caddy, Nginx Proxy Manager Plus) |
| 02:40      | Abandoned alternative deployment attempts after ~2.5 hours |
| 02:40 - 03:10 | Installed a fresh copy of Nginx Proxy Manager on a new LXC container and reconfigured from scratch |
| 03:10      | Services restored; system fully operational |

## Resolution & Actions Taken

1. **Failed Attempts with Alternative Proxy Solutions**  
   Spent approximately 2.5 hours trying to deploy and configure Traefik, Caddy, and Nginx Proxy Manager Plus. These efforts were unsuccessful, leading to delays in restoring service.

2. **Fresh Install of Nginx Proxy Manager**  
   Decided to start from scratch by deploying a new instance of Nginx Proxy Manager on a new LXC container. This involved:
   - Setting up a new container environment
   - Installing Nginx Proxy Manager anew
   - Reconfiguring proxy and SSL certificates via cloudflare's SSL provider
   
   This approach successfully restored service and stabilized the environment.

## Lessons Learned

- **Certificate Management:** Automated certificate renewal processes can cause system failures if not properly monitored or if certificate validation fails unexpectedly.
- **Backup & Recovery:** Maintaining backups of configuration and certificates could reduce downtime during such incidents.
- **Testing Alternative Solutions:** Prolonged attempts to deploy alternative proxy solutions highlight the importance of testing and validation in staging environments before production deployment.
- **Monitoring & Alerts:** Enhanced monitoring and alerting for certificate expiry or proxy failures could enable quicker response times.

## Next Steps

- Investigate the root cause of the Let's Encrypt certificate failure to prevent recurrence.
- Implement regular backups of configurations and certificates.
- Improve monitoring for SSL certificate health and proxy server status.
- Document and test fallback procedures for proxy management failures.
- Review and optimize deployment procedures for proxy solutions.

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**Prepared by:** Kneesox - Shiro  
**Date:** 08/24/25