TheHobbyist

Hi folks,

I have Alpine Linux installed in an encrypted LUKS partition. I came across this tutorial which shows how to setup a key in a USB drive and when the drive is inserted and the computer booted, the LUKS partition auto-unlocks with the key on the USB drive.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1414617/configure-ubuntu-22-04-zfs-for-automatic-luks-unlock-on-boot-via-usb-drive

I would like to setup the same thing but I do not have Alpine linux installed on ZFS, so I'm looking for ways to adapt the instructions.

So far, what I've done is:

1. I've setup the key on the usb stick and I can unlock the LUKS partition with that key.
2. create a /etc/mkinitfs/features.d/usb-unlock.sh script with the following content:

(the echo to /dev/kmesg was to check whether the script did indeed run at boot by trying to print to the kernel messages but I can't find anything in the kernel messages).

#!/bin/sh

echo "usb-unlock script starting..." > /dev/kmsg

USB_MOUNT="/mnt/my-usb-key" # The USB stick mounting point
LUKS_KEY_FILE="awesome.key"  # The name of your keyfile on the USB stick

# Search for the USB stick with the key
for device in $(ls /dev/disk/by-uuid/*); do
    mount $device $USB_MOUNT 2>/dev/null
    if [ -f "$USB_MOUNT/$LUKS_KEY_FILE" ]; then
        # Unlock the LUKS partition
        cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda3 cryptroot \
            --key-file "$USB_MOUNT/$LUKS_KEY_FILE" && exit 0
    fi
    umount $USB_MOUNT
done
echo "No USB key found, falling back to password prompt." # this message never appears, despite not having found the key on the usb stick

echo "usb-unlock script ending." > /dev/kmsg

3. I added usb-unlock to the features in mkinitfs.conf:

mytestalpine:~# cat /etc/mkinitfs/mkinitfs.conf 
features="ata base ide scsi usb virtio ext4 cryptsetup keymap usb-unlock"

4. run mkinitfs to rebuild the initramfs. Then reboot to test the implementation, which was unsuccessful.

What am I missing / doing wrong? Thank you for your help!

Edit: forgot to add step 4

Hi folks,

I'm seeing there are multiple services which externalise the task of "identity provider" (e.g. login with Facebook, google or what not).

In my case, I am curious about Tailscale, a VPN service which allows one to chose an identity provider/SSO between Google, Microsoft, Github, Apple and OIDC.

How can I find out what data is actually communicates to the identity provider? Their task should simply be to decide whether I am who I claim to be, nothing more. But I'm guessing there may be some subtleties.

In the case of Tailscale, would the identity provider know where I'm trying to connect? Or more?

Answers and insights much appreciated! The topic does not seem to have much information online.

Yesterday, there was a live scheduled by Louis Grossman, titled "Addressing futo license drama! Let's see if I get fired...". I was unable to watch it live, but now the stream seems to be gone from YouTube.

Did it air and was later removed? Or did it never happen in the first place?

Here's the link to where it was meant to happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTBYMobWQzk

Cheers

Edit: a new video was recently posted at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCjy2CHP7zU

I do not know if this was the supposedly edited and reuploaded video or if this is unrelated.

Hi folks,

I seem to be having some internet connectivity issues lately and I would like to monitor my access to the internet. I have a homelab and was wondering whether someone had perhaps something like a docker container which pings a custom website every so often and plots a timescale of when the connection was successful and when it was not.

Or perhaps you have another suggestion? I know of dashboards like grafana but I don't know whether they can be configured to actually generate that data or whether they rely on a third party to feed them. Thanks!

Hi folks, I'm looking for a specific YouTube video which I watched around 5 months ago.

The gist of the video is that it was comparing the transcoding performance of an Intel iGPU when used natively, compared to when passed through to a VM. From what I recall there was a significant performance hit and it was around 50% or so (in terms of fps transcoding). I believe the test was performed on jellyfin. I don't remember whether it was using xcpng, proxmox or another OS. I don't remember which channel published this video nor when it was published, just that I watched it sometime between April and June this year.

Anyone recall or know what video I'm talking about? Possible keywords include: quicksync, passthrough, sriov, iommu, transcoding, iGPU, encoding.

Thank you in advance!