Troubleshooting on Nerdsid.com

Kill Any Process Using a Port in Powershell

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 05:17:46 +0000

Recently I wanted to start a server in port 8899 & I got an error telling that some other process is using it.

Here is a one-liner you can use to kill an existing process bound to a port.

 
 POWERSHELL
 
Stop-Process -Id (Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 8899).OwningProcess -Force

How to Fix the Apostrophe (') Key Not Working in VirtualBox Ubuntu

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 07:32:28 +0530

If you’re running Ubuntu inside Oracle VM VirtualBox and notice that pressing the apostrophe (’) or tildae (`) key doesn’t show anything until you hit space, you’re not alone.

This issue is caused by “dead keys” in keyboard layouts, where keys are designed to combine with others to create accented characters.

In this guide, I’ll show you two simple fixes to make your apostrophe key work.

Root cause

What you’re seeing is a keyboard layout / “dead key” behavior, not a VirtualBox bug.

Docker failed to resolve

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 05:27:57 +0000

I recently enountered this error.

Grep Failing on Hyphen Patterns? Try This Fix

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 18:48:38 +0530

Today I was searching for --debug in a log file.

So, I ran grep "--debug" file.log.

To my utter surprise, instead of seeing a match, I got this error:

grep output


grep: unrecognized option '--debug'
Usage: grep [OPTION]... PATTERNS [FILE]...

I didn’t expect to see any error because I had quoted the pattern ("--debug").

After few minutes of searching, I found the fix:

grep -- --debug file.log

This is where the humble double hyphen -- steps in.

Systems Aren’t Predictable - 3 Lessons From a DR activity

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 23:43:47 +0530

Lessons from a DR activity that didn’t go as planned

What is a Disaster Recovery (DR) activity?

A DR activity is a planned exercise, where you intentionally flip your workloads to a secondary setup. It may be a new region, a new cluster, or a new infrastructure environment.

The goal is to ensure that everything works the way it should when your primary environment is unavailable.

Lessons from DR activity

This week, we ran a DR activity. Everything looked perfect on paper.

4 Ways to Watch Logs Live in Linux

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 12:49:55 +0530

1. `tail -f`

Use when:

You want to quickly stream a log file.
You want to perform short, one-off checks on a single log file.

Availibility: available on all Linux/Unix systems.

Example:

 
 BASH
 
tail -f /var/log/syslog

2. `tail -F`

Some services (like Nginx, Apache) rotate logs i.e. they stop writing logs to an old file and instead write to a new file (named sequentially). tail -f stops following when that happens, but tail -F automatically switches to the new file. In other words, it handles log rotation gracefully.

How to Fix Common Git Mistakes

Wed, 03 May 2023 05:27:57 +0000

Git is a version control system that allows developers to manage and track changes to their codebase over time. It is easy to make mistakes, while working with Git. This can result in confusion, lost effort, and even data loss. In this post, we’ll go over some common Git problems and their solutions. Whether you’re new to Git or want to enhance your Git skills, these tips will help you become a more efficient and productive developer.

How to Fix SSH Error: Could not open a connection to your authentication agent

Sat, 07 Jan 2023 07:32:28 +0530

The problem

Recently, I was trying to add a SSH key to the ssh-agent. So, I ran the following command:

 
 BASH
 
ssh-add ~/.ssh/<key_name>

This resulted in the following error:

 
 BASH
 
Could not open a connection to your authentication agent.

The solution

The error message is pretty clear. Since a connection to the ssh-agent could not be opened, first let’s check if the ssh-agent is running or not.

 
 BASH
 
ps -e | grep [s]sh-agent

If the ssh-agent is not running, you will not see any output. This is exactly what happened in my case. So, the solution is simple: you need to start the ssh-agent.