linux

A little annoyance I always run into when configuring a new laptop is getting Gnome Display Manager to use Colemak on the login screen. For some reason, it’s impossible to configure the GDM keyboard layout unless there’s at least 2 users on the system. Otherwise Gnome Settings refuses to show the UI for it. I’m not sure why this weirdly hostile feature towards folks with alternative keyboard layouts on a single-user system exists in Gnome, but here we are.

This is a silly one, but I always forget about this until I need it and then stumble across it again. The scenario: you’ve just updated a piece of software and it comes with a new sample configuration. Being the good admin that you are of course you want to your config to reflect it, you’re not a monster. But you want to keep the settings you’ve tweaked. I always end up with a mess of patch files trying to do things, but all you really need is your favourite editor.

I’m renaming the series to “Replacing Avahi” because after a bit of reflection “getting rid of” sounds a lot harsher than I ever intended. In part 1 we took a quick look at what DNS-SD is and why we use Avahi for it on Linux. We then came up with a plan on how to replace it by re-implementing its D-Bus API ourselves by in turn leveraging systemd-resolved’s D-Bus API.

Avahi is a daemon you can run on your system for the purpose of discovering or announcing services using DNS-SD. DNS-SD defines how to perform service discovery using DNS SRV and TXT records. Though it can use unicast DNS, its most typical usage is using multicast DNS over zeroconf, i.e link local IPv4/6. If you’ve heard of Apple Bonjour, this is it. For end-user systems, being able to discover devices in a network using DNS-SD is incredibly helpful.

When running servers I want to encrypt the data stored on them. The problem you then pretty quickly run into is that it’s hard to actually boot with an encrypted root. I’ve solved this problem in the past by having a tinysshd in my initramfs which prompts me for a password to unlock the volumes. Though this works, it’s annoying in that the server isn’t able to boot at all, causing any additional monitoring I have to not work.

Update 2019-06-09: Performing BIOS updates I recently decided to get myself a new laptop. Though work provides me with one, I make a point out of never using it for personal use. It can get a bit complicated around intellectual property laws. I’m also perfectly fine with my employer enforcing certain policies on their device that I just don’t want for my personal devices. For the device itself I decided I wanted a 13" model, with an AMD Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics.

With my XPS 13 up and running I ran into some issues with the Dell WD15 (USB 3) dock. It mainly caused my display manager to crash whenever I would plug it in with (with my external screen attached), except after a fresh boot. This is of course wildely unhelpful but a colleague told me many folks had issues with the USB 3 version of the dock and to get a TB16 (thunderbolt) instead.

After about 3 years it was time to refresh my hardware. Though I’ve long used MacBook Pro’s as my daily drivers the new MBP with touchbar wasn’t getting me excited and the new keyboard feels downright awful to me. So, I decided this was going to be the year of the Linux Desktop and I’ve switched to a Dell XPS 13 (9360, Kaby Lake) Developer Edition (comes pre-loaded with Ubuntu).