Latest posts

    Setting up a btrfs subvolume with noCOW

  • As touched on in my previous post about btrfs, the copy on write (COW) capabilities are very handy. However, as COW shouldn't be used for large files with small random writes (e.g. databases and VMs), I wanted to turn it off for these things.

  • Setting up a VPN client on Arch Linux

  • There are many uses for VPNs, from creating a secure connection to a business netork to accessing your home server to accessing online shows in your home country. When I'm travelling away from home and want to prevent the local network of "free WiFi" users sniffing my web traffic, I use Private Internet Access. They provide OpenVPN access (which is more secure) and offer plenty of automated setup methods for various operating systems. With Arch, however, we like to do things the manual way...

  • Dr Strange[Vim]love, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the [Atom] bomb

  • Vim has been my editor of choice for a while now. For web development it is perfect -- lightweight, tightly integrated with the command line and highly customisable -- not to mention present by default on almost every linux servers. Despite having a steep learning curve (mostly due to its modal nature), once you learn its vocabulary it feels highly inefficient to ever do without it.

  • Installing Arch linux with dm-crypt and btrfs

  • Having recently purchased a new laptop, it was a good opportunity to try out a new filesystem, btrfs. Just to complicate things I wanted to secure my system with whole drive encryption, so today we're throwing dm-crypt (LUKS) into the mix!

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