Premise Create a user that has the sole task to run some daemon that also needs to store files on disk. Starting and stopping daemon, as well as accessing these files, needs to be possible via ssh. Otherwise it should be locked down as far as possible. Let's call the user sandy from now on. There al...

This article only slightly expands on what the archwiki says about it. Linking /bin/sh to dash instead of bash is not the same as "changing your default shell". I want startup scripts and everything that has a #!/bin/sh shebang to use the lightest possible shell by default, but I still want my tru...

Inspired by a forum thread Choose which shell your scripts use, that's the "#/bin/*sh" at the top: dash: very small & fast but limited. you will have to use more external commands to accomplish things. bash: bulkier, takes longer to load, slightly slower (although to notice this at all one ha...

Once again I have to copy tons of files to a USB stick, and it's way too slow. It's a known effect on Linux systems. Why filemanagers cannot recognize that, I don't know. It's be enough to copy files one by one (queuing) instead of starting all those operation all at once. It also happens on the com...

Towards the end (points 4. and 5.) this article has instructions on how to encrypt/decrypt any string. It might come in handy when e.g. checking your Email with curl, because one wouldn't want the password in plain text either on the command line or in some file. Here's a slightly refined version: o...

I sometimes use a shortcut to quickly translate snippets of highlighted text, via google translate. I hate to admit it, but it does this best. It auto-detects the input language and defaults to english for output, which is what I need in most cases. There's a few applications for translating text sn...

You want to see how your Linux system reacts to a certain peripheral being plugged in (smartphone, monitor, USB stick etc.). dmesg can provide that information, but one needs to separate it from previous messages. Here's how: Make sure the device in question is unplugged. Open a terminal, maximise ...

I feel the need to migrate all my github stuff to somewhere else. Because Microsoft is buying Github. Gitlab does not seem to be that much different. In the end, I chose two providers: framagit.org and notabug.org - just to be on the safe side. The migration itself happened via web interface and isn...