Auto shutdown and setup scripts

With a working remote setup and a comfortable way to run services and move files between machines, there are two small habits left that make day-to-day life with a remote server much easier: not paying for idle compute, and being able to rebuild the whole setup quickly when you need a new machine.

Scheduled shutdown

If your remote machine is billed hourly, forgetting to turn it off is the most common way to end up with an uncontrolled bill. I use a very simple guardrail for this - my server shuts down every day at 6 pm, which simply matches the end of my work day and may not suit everyone. There are fancier solutions worth exploring some day (for example, auto-shutdown after a period of SSH inactivity), but this basic version already covers where most of the actual savings come from.

Open root's crontab:

sudo crontab -e

Add the following line:

0 18 * * * /sbin/shutdown -h now

The machine will power off every day at 18:00 system time. Check the timezone with timedatectl before relying on it - cloud images often ship in UTC, so 18:00 there may not be 18:00 where you are. If it's off, set it with:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

That's it. This single line covers the "I forgot to turn it off" case, which is where most of the actual savings come from.

Setup scripts

The other habit is making it cheap to spin up a fresh machine. Over time I've collected a small repository of setup scripts that take a new VPS from a blank Debian image to "ready to code" in a single command. It's nothing production ready - I keep messing around with it - but maybe it will inspire you to build your own. Take a quick look at the env-setup repository.

Once users are configured, I just run:

bash -c "$(wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sobanieca/env-setup/master/env-setup.sh)"

After this (and cloning the relevant git repositories) I'm ready to code almost immediately. In most cases I need only around 30 minutes to set up a new machine end-to-end.

Nowadays, with AI, it should be very easy to adjust such scripts to your own needs.

Conclusion

That's more or less everything I wanted to share for the build-anywhere category. This workflow has served me very well for a couple of years now, and I encourage you to give it a try. There is some friction at the start, but in my opinion it pays off quickly - you end up with access to very powerful machines just a few clicks away, and a local device that is genuinely disposable.