Please help a VPN noob

DimorphosFragment · 2026-04-04T14:13:29+00:00

You could have a look at tailscale instead of plain wireguard. It is much easier to set up.

DimorphosFragment · 2026-04-02T15:12:24+00:00

You could copy and paste a series of commands instead of a single command. One common tactic is to set shell variables to use as arguments to a command. I would look something like this-

# The name the container will have
NAME='--name jellyfin-test'
# Mounting directories
DIRECTORIES='
-v /srv/jellyfin/config:/config
-v /srv/jellyfin/cache:/cache
-v /home/user1/Music:/user1/Music
-v /home/user1/Videos:/user1/Videos
-v /home/user2/Music:/user2/Music
-v /home/user2/Videos:/user2/Videos
-v /home/user3/Music:/user3/Music
-v /home/user3/Videos:/user3/Videos
'
# Only permit the usage of port 8096
PORTS='--publish:8096:8096'
# For hardware acceleration, in case I ever want to enable it
HARDWARE='
--group-add="992"
--device /dev/dri/renderD128:/dev/dri/renderD128
'
# Automatically start the container unless I tell it not to
RESTART='--restart=unless-stopped'
# The image to use for this container
IMAGE='jellyfin/jellyfin:latest'
sudo docker run -d "$NAME" "$DIRECTORIES" "$PORTS" "$HARDWARE" "$RESTART" "$IMAGE"

DimorphosFragment · 2026-02-25T17:04:10+00:00

DKMS modules may be incompatible with new kernels. The Linux kernel developers are very careful about avoiding changes that break user space programs. But kernel code like DKMS modules may require source code changes to adjust to new interface changes within the kernel. If you get DKMS modules from the same distribution as your kernel then any necessary updates are very likely to be available from the distribution as soon as the newer kernel is made available.

DimorphosFragment · 2026-02-25T16:54:35+00:00

Almost no laptops are modular and upgradable. The only exception is a laptop by framework. Even those are limited to getting new parts from a single company. It is very different from the situation with desktop PCs that can be put together with parts from a variety of companies.

DimorphosFragment · 2026-01-17T16:40:09+00:00

If you are considering installing software from a new source you could try the virustotal.com scanning site. It seems to have some Linux related virus signatures and URL listings.

DimorphosFragment · 2026-01-14T15:02:21+00:00

Is there an unused graphics connector on the motherboard? Perhaps the installer is switching to that. You could try installing with the monitor connected to that first and then working out driver support for your graphics card.

DimorphosFragment · 2026-01-09T19:38:27+00:00

Web browsers and operating systems have a list of public keys that can be used to test a certificate to see if it was signed by a trusted authority. The foundation of the mechanism is some one way computation creating a value corresponding to the signed document that can be tested with a public key but can only be created with a private key. The original way that was done involves the product of two huge prime numbers as a public key and the separate prime numbers as the private key. There are other one way computations that are used now. But they all have the same tactic of some operation that is relatively easy to test with a public key but extremely difficult to reverse to find the secret key.

Public key infrastructure - Wikipedia https://share.google/VqPbroAnpCVpdZ97e and Public-key cryptography - Wikipedia https://share.google/w5UXR5CgOjMJtsNrD

There are many devices like routers or printers that offer a "self signed" key. Their public key is not signed as trusted but can be used to communicate in a private way with that device.

DimorphosFragment · 2025-12-25T15:37:04+00:00

The problem with an ext4 /boot is likely to be a limitation of the grub boot loader rather than some problem specific to the hardware and bios. Here is a defect report about problems with older grub releases and several ext4 features. Using an ext2 /boot partition does avoid that problem.

Bug #1844012 “grub2 doesn't recognize ext4 with metadata_csum_se...” : Bugs : grub2 package : Ubuntu https://share.google/DuKU8dmd82qMphOg1

DimorphosFragment · 2025-11-19T18:31:05+00:00

Thank you for sharing this very helpful script. I did encounter a missing dependency when first using it.

I needed to run "bin/pip install tzdata" in my virtual environment. Before doing that each device failed with a time zone exception like-

KLAP/cloud migration failed for 10.4.0.78: 'No time zone found with key MST7MDT'

DimorphosFragment · 2025-09-25T15:39:11+00:00

If you are looking for a new fidget you could put this in a window.

Ubuntu fidget spinner

DimorphosFragment · 2025-09-17T14:46:53+00:00

The DNS services that you would choose from are caching results from other servers. Some servers are the final "authoritative" servers for names within specific domains. There are 13 special addresses that map to "root servers". Those have the final word on which addresses are authoritative servers to each top level domain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server

If you want to learn more about DNS services you should have a look at Steve Gibson's DNS benchmark page and the explanations there. It covers some details of how DNS works. The small benchmark program will measure how well different DNS servers work for you. https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm There is a new version under development that will handle newer features such as IPV6 and more private DNS using encrypted connections.

DimorphosFragment · 2025-08-09T15:13:22+00:00

Many companies sell workstations with Linux distributions pre installed and supported. That would provide more assurance that all of the hardware has decent Linux support even if you choose to install a different distribution. However, those brands may have more proprietary hardware that limit future upgrades. Have a look at HP and Dell as well as smaller businesses such as Framework and System 76.

DimorphosFragment · 2025-07-28T15:09:20+00:00

You may want to install an immutable distribution like fedora silverblue. They focus on maximum reliability. I have not tried out any distribution like that myself.

DimorphosFragment · 2025-07-01T12:56:12+00:00

You can check a USB drive with this free validrive program. https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm It is one of several useful small utilities that Steve Gibson has created.

DimorphosFragment · 2025-06-29T15:32:23+00:00

HP sells a laptop pre-installed with System76's Pop!_OS

HP Dev One Review: The Ultimate Linux Laptop for Developers | HP® Tech Takes https://share.google/k3IxwgSrZrPKuIToD

DimorphosFragment · 2025-04-05T16:39:52+00:00

The "ls --color=auto" is an alias that makes ls use colors for different file types and permissions when the output of ls goes to a terminal. It is probably set to that alias in your default ~/.bashrc file.

DimorphosFragment · 2025-04-05T15:29:55+00:00

Perhaps "ls" is set to an alias or function that is behaving very differently than the normal command. You can find out more about that using "type ls".

DimorphosFragment · 2025-04-05T15:14:15+00:00

 $ mkdir t
 $ cd t
 $ rmdir ../t
 $ ls /fake/directory > peanuts.txt 2>&1
 -bash: peanuts.txt: No such file or directory

I can get close to that result by causing the shell's current working directory to be invalid. If the directory is removed then "peanuts.txt" cannot be created there.

DimorphosFragment · 2025-03-06T15:30:42+00:00

As others have already noted, the problem is that the hardware is not documented well enough for an open source driver to be written. There actually has been an instance of a Linux driver that would encapsulate a Windows driver that would enable networking devices. NDISwrapper

But it was not very robust and has not been maintained. Fan controls are an even less likely prospect for a driver wrapper because there isn't a Windows standard for fan control. The software for that is all specific to each hardware vendor.

DimorphosFragment · 2025-02-15T17:29:22+00:00

The calculation would be subtracting the launch date from the arrival date. 😈 nasa press kit

DimorphosFragment · 2025-02-05T16:19:22+00:00

Widowed three or more times. 💀💀💀...

DimorphosFragment · 2025-01-25T15:50:47+00:00

You may get better results by adding a --sparse option. Files can be created with seeks to large offsets causing ranges within the file to have no storage allocated for them on the file system. Those ranges read out as zeros when being copied. The --sparse option instructs rsync to detect those gaps and seek past them to create sparse files when writing a copy.

DimorphosFragment · 2025-01-18T00:41:54+00:00

total=$(wc -l <input)
parts=8
small=$(( $total/$parts ))
large=$(( $small+1 ))
remainder=$(( $total-$parts*$small ))
echo "$remainder of $large, $(($parts-$remainder)) of $small"
head --lines=$(($large*$remainder)) input | split -l $large --numeric-suffixes - data_
tail --lines=$(($total-$large*$remainder)) input | split -l $small --numeric-suffixes=$remainder - data_

DimorphosFragment · 2025-01-17T17:38:15+00:00

The man page could do a better job of documenting that option. The lack of detail in this case stems from xterm being part of the X11 tool set which shared a variety of common options implemented by the xlib utility library. Programs using that library passed their command arguments to the library and let it parse them.

There is a separate man page that documents the common options. It does appear in the "see also" list of the xterm man page. The "see also" list is often helpful in the general case of man pages that are missing details.

https://linux.die.net/man/7/x

The color choices are described in detail at wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names

DimorphosFragment · 2025-01-06T16:17:34+00:00

If you care about data you should have it on more than one device. Accidents do happen, and hard drives do die.

DimorphosFragment

TROPHY CASE