Simplified dm-crypt & btrfs disc creation

Most Linux users recognize the importance of data protection and security. Many of us will be familiar with encrypted partitions, almost all of the time these encrypted partitions will be managed, mounted and created with dm-crypt. A key or password will be used to decrypt the partition and mount the contents within. In an ideal world the data would be safe against many forms of unfortunate and maleficent intent. However traditional filesystems like Ext3, Ext4, NTFS, and HFS+ have a serious flaw. This flaw can lead to incorrect or damaged files being treated as undamaged and correct files. These filesystems fail to account for the physical phenomena known as bit-rot. Bit-rot is when bits on physical media or ssd’s flip from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0 over time. In modern filesystems this is accounted for by creating checksums

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Installing Ubuntu on Acer Spin UEFI devices

Installing Ubuntu on the Acer Spin 1 has been proving to be quite the hassle to me. Fortunately; following these steps allows other to easily install Ubuntu on the Acer Spin 1 and possible many other Acer UEFI devices. Installing the bootloader will likely fail steps are provided to recover from this and perform bootloader repair. The steps require a 4gb usb drive for the Ubuntu live usb and later for installing rEFInd.

Typical rEFInd boot splash screen with 2 possbile operating systems found

Short demonstration of raid10 with btrfs

Short demonstration of modern software raid options using btrfs. In this example raid10 is used to show what happens when a whole disc is lost. We use common btrfs commands to repare the raid10 architecture and as a result can see that no data is lost.

Unreal Engine game development Linux pitfalls & resolutions

Unreal Engine its support for working and building for Linux is ‘lacking’ to say the least. Not only in the documentation about the tools that now have to be run manually from the commandline; generally what is and which features are not supported and common issues and resolutions are at least for Linux barely documented. So I will list some of the problems I have encountered and how to resolve them. Resolving all these problems will make creating a cross-platform game, using the UE4Editor on Linux and creating binary releases for distribution possible.

Cross platform video playback in unreal engine

The unreal engine supports Windows, Linux and Mac but each has its own different video player framework. If you try to have a simple single video player in Unreal this will likely only work for one or at most two platforms. By following this guide a video player can be made within Unreal engine that allows for playing back videos on Windows, Linux and Mac.

Configure exim4 smtp relay to use tls on connect (smtps)

Exim has seen many changes over the years and is up to date on modern standards such as the use of STARTSSL. This however leads to problems when using other protocols or standards such as smtps otherwise known as tls on connect. In this guide we configure exim4 to use the smtps protocol with a remote smarthost configuration.

Making social media data searchable in a representable manner

During the third semester at the Amsterdam university of applied science I was involved in the development of a online platform to search, analyze and represent data from the social media platform SnappThis. The product converts a JSON export of the social media database to a relational MySQL database through the use of Hibernate a java framework. In conjunction with hibernate a extensive API was made to allow realtime data exchange between java and javascript through the use of jQuery AJAX.

Replacing rtl-sdr coaxial connector with sma to improve sensitivity

Some rtl-sdr dongles are shipped with a coaxial connector, this connector is commonly used in home appliances and is typically used for 50 or 75 ohms characteriscal impediances. The coaxial connector works fairly well considering its construction and production costs however most coaxial connectors suffer high signal loss at high frequencies. The exact characteristic plot for a given coaxial connector differs greatly by brand, type and even per unit. By replacing the rtl-sdr coaxial connector with a sma connector we can expect improvements for received signal strength at higher frequencies.

Amazing performance with RAMdisk.

Improve performance of a variaty of different applications by tremendous amounts. RAMdisk programs are small applications which allow to assign large portions of memory as a drive to the operating system. Find out how to download, install and configure such a program and use it to your advantage. As well as a variaty of tests to get a proper indication of expectable improvements.

Fixing encrypted disc hibernation in Ubuntu with uswsusp

uswsusp A tool to enable encrypted hibernation on Ubuntu even when you use a encrypted LVM volume. By default ubuntu has no hibernation support at all, even worse when you use an LVM encrypted their is no way to enable hibernation in a simple way. However I have found a way to hibernate even with a LVM encrypted volume.