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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • I have a mini PC server that can’t be physically locked away from people in the house, because I do not have the ability or space to install a rack and physically secure it.

    There is a housekeeper that is sometimes not the same person.

    There is a curious child in the house.

    The server needs to be rebooted remotely occasionally.

    Some disks are removable.

    I am not concerned about an APT posing as my maid to steal the key from RAM. It’s not part of my threat model.

    I do want to know if my UEFI, bootloader or UKI has been fucked with without my knowledge.



  • I generally find writing a good role takes longer than doing it manually. Especially as you have to keep testing failure conditions as you think of them.

    However, the point is, that once you’re finished with the role, you never have to do that process again.

    Not if you want to rebuild Not if you want to migrate to a new os Not if you build a second server Not if you move to a newcloud hosting provider

    Porting to a new OS or after an update that changes how the software works is about as fast as doing it manually

    Maybe it’s only one server today, but how many times would you need to rebuild it over the running lifetime?

    The killer feature is that having something like ansible lets you kill your darlings, and keep servers aa cattle, not pets.

    Manual setup chops isn’t a different skill here. I view ansible as a combination setup and documentation. If you’re going to figure out how, why not write down how you did it? If you’re going to write it down complete with code lines to run, why not script it?








  • I used to work for an MSP (Managed Service Provider), can confirm. Security is something I had to redirect attention to on a day-to-day basis. Even then, the company was more concerned with appearance and audit compliance than security.

    I have worked at IT companies that really did care about security, but those companies were driven by management and staff that personally cared about IT security. One of them was a certificate authority.

    Here’s a story about physical security from before that time.

    I once had equipment in a Data Center that was embedded in the 4th floor of an office building. There was a mantrap at the entrance, designed to prevent you from walking away with the main DC door open, or letting people tailgate in to it. One of the doors of the mantrap was a sliding door, disguised as a bit of the hallway.

    The sliding door was locked with a maglock on the thin end, so when it fully closed, it locked and you couldn’t slide it open without a key card, from inside or out.

    …unless you bumped in to it with your shoulder, which separated the lock and opened the door. Which, after it was figured out (about 1 month), happened all the time. People would get let in to the DC without a card that opened that specific door. (DC security control provisioned the main door was separate from building control, which managed the sliding door).

    When they tried to get out later, they’d get stuck in the mantrap, then they’d wait for someone to let them out (pre-cellphones). That person would then show them the trick. This was so common they turned off the forced-lock alarm. This lead to the mantrap being useless, and people propping the DC door open for ease of access when moving stuff in and out.

    This was put in place in 2001, and I visited the building last year in 2025, it’s still in place today.

    It’s worth noting that this DC was shared by multiple competitive reinsurers, ISPs and financial agencies. The were no cameras outside or inside, and you could poke most server reset buttons through the rack cages with the ink cartridge of a ball point pen. Not everyone was shown that trick.



  • To stave off water damage and rusting when shipping to humid areas.

    One dock strike or lost piece of paperwork and it could sit in an unair-conditioned container long enough for the cardboard to disintegrate.

    It is an awful waste of plastic, but I expect the return rate for rusted tools ‘damaging’ fasteners is high enough that financially it makes sense for the company


  • If you want to approach 200Hz, then it’s probably still good advice to go for the XTX, especially if high framerate is a strong feel-good improvement for you.

    I’ve got a 2k 240Hz monitor, I can drop it to 1080p for testing if you want me to try any specific games out. If I’ve got it, I can give you some rough FPS numbers - just let me know! I’m running steam on Linux with proton, but the numbers should be pretty comparable to Windows these days.

    Love an ITX build - I’m cheating with the XTIA XProto L because it’s an open build. I was lucky the 7900XT fit on mine - it’s almost too long. The MERC 310 XFX 7900XT and XTX are both 344mm. It dwarfs my old RTX2070.

    They are technically PCIe 4.0 cards. My i7-10700K CPU is only 3.0 capable, but it runs just fine. Some people reported problems using 4.0 cards in 3.0 slots. I haven’t seen issues. I’m told I’m leaving some power on the table, but with the price of RAM, I’m not upgrading any time soon.

    One other note, the additional power supply connections required for the GPUs are 2x8 pin connectors for the 7900XT and 3x8 pin connectors for the 7900XTX, so you may need to buy a new power supply or double check your power supply came with enough ports and cables if it’s modular.



  • med@sh.itjust.workstoLinux@lemmy.ml•BTRFS Question
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    2 months ago

    I’ve seen the recommendations of software raid0. The answers are all technically correct.

    Don’t do this. Especially with real hardware. If you lose one drive, you will lose both the drives.

    Could you give us more info on how your other encrypted drive is mounted and meant to be used?

    • It is possible to get the second encrypted drive to decrypt and mount automatically, without logging in.
    • It’s possible to do it without leaving a key for your second drive on your primary hard drive using a TPM
    • It is possible to get both drives to decrypt automatically and mount

    It all depends how the encryption is being done, and where the mount points are.

    Could you give us:

    • The rough dimensions of the drive partitions (fdisk -l)
    • Your current mount points after mounting the second drive (df -h)