Operating BOA — advanced root reference

This is the complete operator reference for running BOA in production. It assumes you have root, you're fluent in Aegir's model, and you want exact, authoritative detail — every control variable, default, threshold and tuning knob — not hand-holding.

Pages here are dense and complete. Where a full variable or command table exists, pages link into the Reference appendix rather than repeating it, so the canonical values live in one place.

In this guide

• Architecture & Aegir internals — how the stack is wired: Master/Satellite, the entity model, the task queue.
• Host control files & INI reference — the control/marker system, .barracuda.cnf / .octopus.cnf, INI precedence.
• PHP-FPM & performance — FPM capacity sizing, opcache/APCu, cache tuning.
• Web tier (Nginx) internals — rewrites, templates, vhost behaviour, SSL operations, edge defence.
• Database (MySQL/Percona) — Percona tuning, my.cnf lifecycle, mydumper, graceful control.
• Backups internals & operations — multiback/dcysetup/duplicity, regions, retention, recovery.
• Security & isolation — the threat model, lshell/ltd-users, CSF, SYNPROXY, AppArmor, hardening.
• Abuse Guard (nginx IDS) — scan_nginx scoring, the ban pipeline, request guards, thresholds.
• Self-healing monitor stack — watchdogs, load auto-pause, process guards, cadence, loadreport.
• Solr search (operator) — Solr tuning, Solr 9 modules, core lifecycle.
• OS lifecycle & upgrades (advanced) — Devuan codename upgrades, major OS upgrades, manual BOA upgrade.
• Cross-host migration & cloning — xoct/xmass migration, clone mechanics, aliases/redirects.
• Operator troubleshooting & recovery — task-failure recovery, FIXME, 502s, mail/TLS, backup failures.
• Native files symlinking — the per-account static store for site files/private, autosymlink / fix-drupal-site-symlinks.sh / symlinkinfo, the gated nightly conversion, orphan archiving, and backup relocation onto attached storage.

Changing BOA's code, not just operating it? The fork model, the Provision/Hosting APIs and the release/serial pipeline are in the Developing BOA guide.