This project trains a small TinyStories-style GPT model from random initialization on an Apple M4 Mac mini 16GB using MLX. It is not about calling APIs or fine-tuning an existing model, but rather walking through the entire pipeline of data preparation, tokenizer, model architecture, training loop, checkpoint, and inference generation.

This write-up leans more toward an engineering retrospective: the focus is not on training a chat-capable model, but on verifying whether a personal machine can complete an end-to-end small-scale LLM training run.

Project repository: sergioperezcheco/llm-from-scratch

When using Systems Manager Patch Manager to scan Windows Server 2019 patches, if SSM Agent, network, and permissions are all normal, but WindowsUpdate.log shows the Microsoft update service returning 503, the root cause may be on Microsoft's side, not AWS's.

When creating FSx for Windows File Server using a self-managed Active Directory, if Single-AZ 2 or Multi-AZ file system creation fails and reports Get-ADComputer: Unable to contact the server, focus on checking TCP 9389 connectivity from the FSx subnet to the domain controllers.

This migration mainly accomplished two things: first fixing the Docker port mapping failure on Debian 12, then migrating new-api from SQLite to MySQL. There were quite a few pitfalls along the way, especially iptables/nftables compatibility and SQLite to MySQL syntax differences.

When I get a new Mac, I like to do a systematic inspection first: hardware info, SSD health, port status, security configuration, and system stability — all checked through. This way, if any issues come up later, I can tell whether it's a machine problem or caused by the usage environment.

A bizarre experience: the VS Code icon in the Dock suddenly turned into a generic app icon, and the original Visual Studio Code.app was gone from Finder. After investigation, the problem turned out to be caused by VS Code's auto-update, the ShipIt background process, and cross-APFS-volume moves.

Kali comes with many security testing tools. If you don't want to take up C drive space, you can migrate the WSL distribution to the E drive. This article documents the process of installing Kali WSL, exporting a backup, reimporting to a specified directory, and setting the default login user.

AWS China does not directly provide a Windows 11 AMI, and VM Import/Export also requires additional image preparation and import procedures. A compromise approach is to first launch a Linux EC2 instance and then reinstall the system as Windows using an open-source reinstall script.

Project repository: bin456789/reinstall

Reference documentation: CSDN original article

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