OpenBSD: Now With More Encryption!

After trying to encrypt the $HOME partition on the OpenBSD install I did, well... Things went a little complicated, so, in the end went cold turkey with the thing, and simply re-installed, this time with full disk encryption, using the instructions from here: Full Disk Encryption.
No problem whatsoever, the installation went like silk, and everything was kosher with the lappie.

Un-encrypt Your $HOME

This is how I move my $HOME from encrypted to un-encrypted,  in order to be able to keep using Dropbox... Yes, in the end, choose to keep it.
Done this on all of my Linux Mint boxes that had an encrypted $HOME (still running an encrypted LVM, tho).

- Login as your regular user thru GUI.
- Disable Dropbox autostart.
- Logout.
- Drop to a TTY, login as the root user .
- Issue: umount /home/$USER
- Edit the text file "/home/.ecryptfs/$USER/.ecryptfs/Private.mnt".
Change "/home/$USER" to "/home/$USER/Private"
- Issue:

mkdir /home/$USER/Private
chown $USER:$USER /home/$USER/Private
chmod 0700 /home/$USER/

- Reboot
- Login regular user (TTY), issue:

  shopt -s dotglob
  mv Private/* .

Be sure there is enough free space on the disk.
I have run out of space on a couple of boxes, no sweat, simply delete the partial one, and then move once again.

- Login thru GUI and start Dropbox, it'll force a re-connect thru the webfront once again and then sync everything, but not a download.

Dropbox Vs Encrypted EXT4: Dropbox Wins...

Yes, well, in the end. I've chosen to remain with Dropbox...
What can I say, the practicality of what it offers is pretty much addictive, I have a ton of HDD with them, thanks to recs, so... I have to put that available space to work, right?
So, I'm in the process of switching the encrypted $HOMEs of the lappies to regular ones, since all of them are installed on encrypted LVM to begin with, I guess there is not a big security risk.
The whole thing is not as hard as I thought it would be, but, a bit of a PITA nonetheless.

Fuck You, Dropbox!

Dropbox will become unusable for me in November.
There is no way I'll not use encryption on my laptops, so bye & bye and fuck off.
Back to local external HDD and custom made scripts to sync stuff between boxes.
What a fucking piece of shit move, man.

Links:

• Dropbox Is Dropping Support For All Linux File Systems Except Unencrypted Ext4

• Dropbox client warns me that it'll stop syncing in Nov, why?

Linux Mint 19: The LightDM Got Thicker

And yet another problem with the "LightDM situation" on Linux Mint 19...
This whole thing with the hanged login window is really, really annoying; I´m not upgrading to LM 19 all of my boxes just because of it.

Linux Mint 19 XFCE: Glorious Screenlock

Didn't had a lot of time to play with my newest Linux Mint 19 installation that much yet, but one thing that caught my attention right away was that the lock screen looks amazing, and that, AFAIK is exactly the same than the login screen.
On previous releases the lock screen was something hideous, I've done my best to make it a little less ugly.
Also, I've noted that if enabled, you are not only requested a password to unlock (doh!) but also you can ask for username as well.

Out With The Sneakernet

After, I guess, some 5 years or so, I'm back onto the Dropbox.
Luckily, I've kept my account active all thru this years, and I'm truly, sincerely fed up with my current manual backup setup (but I'll keep it as well, just to be safe).

No $HOME Encryption For You! (Ubuntu 18.04)

So, the new Ubuntu LTS release doesn't provide with the ability to encrypt your $HOME during the installation:

The installer no longer offers the encrypted home option using ecryptfs-utils. It is recommended to use full-disk encryption instead for this release. 

Link

What a bummer, man! I was using that option since I don't remember when... And, on top of that, I was using an encrypted LVM too.
The beauty of the thing was ho easy was to do the whole thing, right from the installer, without much fuss you ended up with a fairly secure setup right from the get to...

To Dev & Write And Back Again

Well... The little Flip is back on the reservation.
That is, got it back under (full) control, even turned back from the Developer Mode.
The experiment I did to customize the cursor icons on Chrome OS went nowhere at all.
I'm pleasantly surprised as how easy got to be to get out and back onto the Google/ Chrome OS reservation.

Un-ugly Xscreensaver (Or At Least Try...)

The lock screen of XFCE, at least on Linux Mint is awful.
This is the first step towards making it a little easier on the eyes.
The contents of my ~/.Xresources file:

xscreensaver.splash: false

!font settings 9x15, the best fixed old school font in the Universe
xscreensaver.Dialog.headingFont:        9x15
xscreensaver.Dialog.bodyFont:           9x15
xscreensaver.Dialog.labelFont:          9x15
xscreensaver.Dialog.unameFont:          9x15
xscreensaver.Dialog.buttonFont:         9x15
xscreensaver.Dialog.dateFont:           9x15
xscreensaver.passwd.passwdFont:         9x15

!general dialog box (affects main hostname, username, password text)
xscreensaver.Dialog.foreground: #ffffff
xscreensaver.Dialog.background: #111111
xscreensaver.Dialog.topShadowColor: #111111
xscreensaver.Dialog.bottomShadowColor: #111111
xscreensaver.Dialog.Button.foreground: #666666
xscreensaver.Dialog.Button.background: #ffffff

!username/password input box and date text colour
xscreensaver.Dialog.text.foreground: #666666
xscreensaver.Dialog.text.background: #ffffff
xscreensaver.Dialog.internalBorderWidth:36
xscreensaver.Dialog.borderWidth: 0
xscreensaver.Dialog.shadowThickness: 2

!timeout bar (background is actually determined by Dialog.text.background)
!xscreensaver.passwd.thermometer.foreground: #ff0000
!xscreensaver.passwd.thermometer.background: #000000
!xscreensaver.passwd.thermometer.width: 8

! Same color as the background so this "thermometer" dissapears...
xscreensaver.passwd.thermometer.foreground: #111111
xscreensaver.passwd.thermometer.background: #111111
xscreensaver.passwd.thermometer.width: 2

!datestamp format–see the strftime(3) manual page for details
xscreensaver.dateFormat: %I:%M%P %a %b %d, %Y

To test this, I'm currently doing this, after making changes to the file, on a Terminal:

killall xscreensaver

Then start it via Demo:

xscreensaver-demo

Then see the changes by:

xflock4

Recursive Permission

So, like, yes. Right?
While setting up the Nexus 10 after January's Boot Loop Incident.

Patching For The Inevitable

Installed a new firmware on the router at chez Oesediez today.
No doubt it is already old & owned even before I installed it.

Leaving Meltdown and Spectre Behind?

Updating to the T the W530.
Happy so say, that after installing the whole thing and rebooting, the beast, er.. The lappie works A Ok... In these days of Meltdown and Spectre this is no small potatoes.

Stuck Plymouth With Encrypted LVM

Every time the little Dell Inspiron 1000 boots, it gets stuck on the Plymouth window to type the LVM passphrase (the picture on the right) it sort of looks like a scaling problem.
Only solution is rebooting.
After that, you'll be in front of a GRUB menu, select the regular boot, and this time the passphrase prompt will be the "fallback" one, and of course, this time things will work.

Debian 9 On The Thinkpad T43

Net installing Debian 9 Stretch on the old and trusty laptop, mainly because I want something a bit more responsive than Linux Mint XFCE, either the plain vanilla one or the Linux Mint Debian version.
Took a couple of hours and everything seems to be working A Ok, except for the WiFi card, that doesn't work out of the box.
Right after the install is over, it uses nearly 3 GB of HDD.

Installed on an encrypted LVM for security.

Plain Login

A little picture of my dull, flat and simple MDM login theme on XFCE.
What can I say... At this moment its a work in progress.

Lessons From Username Changing

So, I decided to change the username I've been using for like ever on my Linux setup.
It was pretty much painless, except for a couple of glitches...

External USB
I have an (encrypted) external USB that I use for backups.
It is necessary to chown for the new username in order to actually access the files, after decrypting and mounting it

Portability Issues
The change also forced me to address a couple of small humps, strangely enough, both related to OpenVPN.
First, I had to change the aliases I use to connect to the VPNs, stupidly I was sourcing the whole path, replacing that with "~" fixed this.
The other one was with the certs, CA & keys that the *.ovpn files were referencing...
Those were called with the whole path, and replacing that with "~" didn't work, so what I did was placing the key, CA, certs you name it on the same *.ovpn.
It worked like a charm, and on top of that, it tidy up the whole thing.

LM 18 XFCE: Screensaver/ Power Manager Options

The current settings for the screensaver and the Power Manager for the display on the Optiplex.
Right after installing LM 18 the screen (actually my old Apple Cinema Display hooked thru the ADC adapter) failed to shutdown all the way.
But after a reboot the screen does shutdown ok, after the screensaver kicks in and the amount of specified time passes.

Forticlient SSL: apt-get Problems

 

A little issue I stumble upon on the X220 after installing the Forticlient SSL VPN client... Not a biggie, but annoying...

sojourner ~ $ sudo apt-get update
[sudo] password for XXXXXXXX:
Ign:1 http://packages.linuxmint.com sarah InRelease                                                                                                         
Hit:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial InRelease                                                                                                
Hit:3 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security InRelease                                                  
Hit:4 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu xenial InRelease                                                         
Hit:5 http://packages.linuxmint.com sarah Release                                            
Hit:6 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates InRelease         
Hit:8 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports InRelease
Reading package lists... Done
sojourner ~ $ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 forticlient-sslvpn : Depends: lib32gcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1) but it is not installed
                      Depends: libc6-i386 (>= 2.3.4) but it is not installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.
sojourner ~ $

So, following instructions:

$ sudo apt-get -f install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  lib32gcc1 libc6-i386
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  lib32gcc1 libc6-i386
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 2.381 kB of archives.
After this operation, 10,6 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 

Already had a similar problem before, again, courtesy of Forticlient SSL.

Cinnamon: Change Your Passwd

A senior moment, if you will...
A little reminder... I always, no matter what, can't find the option to change my password on Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon...
IMHO, that option should be under
System Settings > Users & Groups...
And not on
System Settings > Account Details...
Or, at least, I believe it should include a link on Account Details to change the passwd.
Anyway, just a thought...