Mailing List Archive

Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 16, 2022 at 6:39 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>> Use /dev/disks/by/partlabel/foo or /dev/disks/by-partuuid/bar.
>>>
>> That's even more typing than /dev/sdk. Some things I do easily by using
>> tab completion and all. When mounting, I let fstab remember the UUID
>> for it.
> That's what copy/paste is for. How often are you editing your
> crypttab anyway? This way when you move drives around they still
> work.
>

I did a google search for crypttab.  After reading what its purpose is,
I see why I don't have one.  It seems it is more for decrypting and
mounting things during bootup.  I don't need to mount encrypted data to
boot up or even log into KDE.  I just need it to access data when
needed.  Most of the encrypted data that I access often is actually my
external drives.  When I leave home, I close the encrypted data.  When I
get home, I open it and remount it.  If I need it for something. 

One day I may encrypt my /home directory.  Maybe.  I don't really see
the need since any data I want protected can just be put on the
encrypted part I have now. Anyway, I suspect when I reboot, this is will
be back to the old way.  I thought I was going to have a opportunity to
do that last night.  My lights went off for a few seconds.  UPS kicked
in and they came back on.  It's not over yet tho.  ;-)

Or am I missing something?

Dale

:-)  :-) 

On Sun, Apr 17, 2022 at 11:04 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
>
> When I bought my current TV, I avoided the smart ones. At the time, it
> was new technology and people were talking about how buggy it was so I
> bought a regular TV. If I had to buy one today, I'd buy a smart one.
> They seem to work pretty well now. Nice and stable at least. Still, I
> check to make sure whatever I buy is based on Linux as its OS. One can
> usually check the manual and see the copyright notice in the last few
> pages. It mentions the kernel. If it mentions windoze, I move on. LQ
> is almost always Linux based.
>
> I'm at the point where I know I need to do this. It's just getting
> there. I even thought about putting the OS on a USB stick. After all,
> once booted, it won't access the stick very often. I could even load it
> into memory at boot up and it not even need the stick at all once
> booted. Like is done with some Gentoo install media.
>
> One of these days.

Fair enough.

You might also investigate whether a newer Roku/AppleTV type
machine will access a network share. I suspect they will.

TrueNAS will run from a USB stick. You'll need two - one for
the setup media and a second to install it to, but after that you
only need storage drives to hold your backups or media.

I think a NAS for backups and media playback makes sense.
You want the machine on most of the time, but if you shut it
down it won't generally stop you from using your main computer.

On the other hand, with NVMe drives in my new machine I
have no spinning media so I use the NAS as a network store
much as you envision watching movies on your TV, but for me
it's mostly astrophotography data.

Have fun. Happy Easter if you celebrate it. Happy Sunday if
you don't.

Cheers,
Mark

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Apr 2022 23:44:58 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>>>> That's even more typing than /dev/sdk. Some things I do easily by
>>>> using tab completion and all. When mounting, I let fstab remember
>>>> the UUID for it.
>>> That's what copy/paste is for. How often are you editing your
>>> crypttab anyway? This way when you move drives around they still
>>> work.
>> What is crypttab?  I type in the command manually.
> Then use a shell alias, even less typing.
>
>


I've done a couple basic alias things here but never grasped it enough
to do anything beyond making ls run with -al each time.  I think there
is another one I did but it was long ago.  I'd have to dig to find it. 

My biggest thing, I'm so used to using sdk1 that I'm likely to have to
hit the backspace key quite often until this gets sorted out.  My OS
stuff is on sda, sdb, sdc and was on sdd.  Anything above that was
external.  If one of the storms knocks my lights out, I may get a chance
to reboot.  See if that fixes things.

Dale

:-)  :-)

On Sun, 17 Apr 2022 13:45:39 -0500, Dale wrote:

> >> What is crypttab?  I type in the command manually.
> > Then use a shell alias, even less typing.
>
> I've done a couple basic alias things here but never grasped it enough
> to do anything beyond making ls run with -al each time.  I think there
> is another one I did but it was long ago.  I'd have to dig to find it. 

alias docrypt='cryptsetup whatever you normally type'

Put that in your profile and you can then mount open the encrypted drives
by typing docrypt. And if your setup changes, you change the alias but the
command you type stays the same.

Or you could use a shell script to open and mount with one command.

#!/bin/sh
cryptsetup whatever
mount whatever


--
Neil Bothwick

Celery is not food. It is a member of the plywood family.

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Apr 2022 13:45:39 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>>>> What is crypttab?  I type in the command manually.
>>> Then use a shell alias, even less typing.
>> I've done a couple basic alias things here but never grasped it enough
>> to do anything beyond making ls run with -al each time.  I think there
>> is another one I did but it was long ago.  I'd have to dig to find it. 
> alias docrypt='cryptsetup whatever you normally type'
>
> Put that in your profile and you can then mount open the encrypted drives
> by typing docrypt. And if your setup changes, you change the alias but the
> command you type stays the same.
>
> Or you could use a shell script to open and mount with one command.
>
> #!/bin/sh
> cryptsetup whatever
> mount whatever
>
>


I have to enter a password in the middle of that.  I don't know how that
would work.  As I've said before, my "scripts" are so simple, they may
not even be called scripts.  They're just files with commands in them. 

If nothing changes when I get around to rebooting, I'll get into this
some more. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

On Mon, 18 Apr 2022 09:06:11 -0500, Dale wrote:

> > #!/bin/sh
> > cryptsetup whatever
> > mount whatever
> >
> >
>
>
> I have to enter a password in the middle of that.  I don't know how that
> would work.  As I've said before, my "scripts" are so simple, they may
> not even be called scripts.  They're just files with commands in them. 
>
> If nothing changes when I get around to rebooting, I'll get into this
> some more. 

It will prompt for the password, just as if you ran the command manually.


--
Neil Bothwick

One of the nice things about standards is that there are so many of them.

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2022 09:06:11 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>>> #!/bin/sh
>>> cryptsetup whatever
>>> mount whatever
>>>
>>>
>>
>> I have to enter a password in the middle of that.  I don't know how that
>> would work.  As I've said before, my "scripts" are so simple, they may
>> not even be called scripts.  They're just files with commands in them. 
>>
>> If nothing changes when I get around to rebooting, I'll get into this
>> some more. 
> It will prompt for the password, just as if you ran the command manually.
>
>


Finally got around to trying this.  I went to town today and locked it
up before I left.  When I came back, used your little script trick and
it worked great.  It mounts and everything for me.  Now I'll make one to
umount and close as well.  No prompting so it should be easy enough. 

Thanks for the tip.

Dale

:-)  :-)