Using Signal Desktop on Fedora with Flatpak

Posted on March 16, 2018 by

In the 2018 race to re-invent AOL instant messenger Signal comes out on top of the competition for end-to-end encryption and a focus on privacy and security.  Signal desktop was recently released for Windows, Mac and only Debian-based Linux distributions with no official RPM available.  Here’s how to use app sandboxing with Flatpak to get it running nicely. Continue reading →

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Block Advertising on your Network with Pi-hole and Raspberry Pi

Posted on February 27, 2018 by

I recently setup Pi-hole on an existing Raspberry Pi running CentOS on my home network to serve as my DNS server and block advertising and unwanted domains for all internet-connected devices.  I’m still using an ASUS router with Shibby Tomato firmware for routing, DHCP and private VLANs so I had to make a few changes.  This is how I got up and running along with some performance tuning.

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Automate RPM Builds from Git Sources using COPR

Posted on September 3, 2017 by

The Fedora project COPR service builds/hosts free RPM package repositories and provides useful automation hooks for your Devopsing.  You can combine COPR and any standard Git source (Github, Gitlab, etc) with webhooks for automated package builds when your source repository is updated.

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Backup and Restore using SpiderOak on Linux

Posted on August 20, 2017 by

Recently the SSD Operating System disk on my primary work desktop failed without warning and no manner of arcane xfsrepair or xfsdump/xfsrestore chicanery would bring it back.  Luckily I had SpiderOak backups as my employer offers this as a service to associates.  Being the first time I’ve needed to restore data with SpiderOak here’s some things I’ve learned and impressions of the service on Linux.

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Using Italics with Vim in your Terminal

Posted on July 17, 2017 by

I wanted all code, system configuration file comments or in-line replies in neomutt email italicised to stand out easier.  Many terminal emulators (xterm, xfce4-terminal, iterm2) don’t support [3m and [23m designators for italics but you can use a custom terminfo to do the trick.  Here’s how to get it working. Continue reading →

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Using Offlineimap with the Gmail IMAP API

Posted on July 17, 2017 by

In a previous guide I documented my mutt + offlineimap + notmuch setup.  If you’re using Gmail with IMAP enabled you can still utilize the superpower of this trio but you’ll need to do some things differently.  I’ll show you how to use offlineimap with the Google Gmail OAuth2 API and configure it. Continue reading →

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Distributed Remote Backups with Git and Etckeeper

Posted on July 15, 2017 by

Git is a powerful tool for lots of tasks, it makes a wonderful VCS that can drive easy utility and automation.  Recently I used git and remote repositories to deploy code & data fanned out to multiple locations.  Here are some examples along with using Etckeeper, a related wrapper tool for revision control around git (or other VCS) with some extra features. Continue reading →

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