Libreboot Full Disk Encryption with Debootstrap

BOOT ARCHITECTURE

Libreboot has support for truly Full Disk Encryption

To understand why this is cool, lets look at a typical GRUB setup.

TRADITIONAL BIOS BOOT 

BIOS
 |
 |
 V
----(FLASH LAYER)
 |
 |
 V
/dev/sda (GRUB)
 |
 |
 V
-->/dev/sda1 /boot (Grub finds this)
 |
 |
 V
-->/dev/sda2 / [LUKS ENCRYPTED]

1. Grub is read off the UNENCRYPTED hard disk
2. GRUB finds the UNENCRYPTED /boot, from /boot/grub/grub.cfg
3. Boots into linux passing information on the disks to the kernel+initramfs
4. The kernel/initramfs decrypt / and mount fstab etc…

Lets look at a Libreboot GRUB boot process for Full Disk Encryption.

Read more...

Segregating Interfaces on OpenBSD

I have an annoying problem, a number of evil devices (specifically a smart TV) keep banging around my network, attempting to connect to Port 35 for no reason. Likely sending data to nefarious groups.

At first, I tried using “guest wifi” to deal with this problem. It didn’t work, and my router only has two ethernet ports. “VLANS” aren’t really going to work when all I have is a dumb switch, and I don’t think they would have helped me anyways. So what am I do to do?

Read more...

Booting OpenBSD on Edgerouter Lite

I am setting up OpenBSD on my edgerouter lite when I ran into an issue

Ted U’s guide: https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/OpenBSD-on-ERL

and

This guide: https://www.codeghar.com/blog/openbsd-network-gateway-on-edgerouter-lite.html

Both say to use this command to boot OpenBSD from u-boot

# setenv bootcmd 'fatload usb 0 $loadaddr bsd; bootoctlinux rootdev=/dev/sd0'

Unfortunately this failed, with something like “unable to read bsd”

Using this command which I got from this guide: https://wiki.analog.com/resources/tools-software/linuxdsp/docs/das-u-boot/loading_file_from_usb_storage_in_uboot

# fatls usb 0:1

Read more...

Unfortunately for me, I’m stuck using Matrix to communicate to people. The client I use to do this is iamb on a remote machine. On emacs, I’m able to get notifications for IRC messages with dbus and dunst. I wanted to get the same for notifications from my friends with iamb.

It’s entirely possible, I used this blog post: https://nikhilism.com/post/2023/remote-dbus-notifications/ to figure out how.

The blog explains how to setup your ssh config to forward your dbus socket.

Read more...

Setting up my Kobo Clara BW Ereader

I recently purchased a Kobo Clara BW in a bid to hopefully start reading books more. While I don’t necessarily have a preference for paper vs ebook, (I don’t really read books), I thought it would be a good purchase. I also have a seemingly bricked Kobo Clara HD that I was planning to install PostmarketOS on, but thats a different project for another time.

Read more...

First Blog Post

Hi, my name is cqst and this is my first blog test. This post is mainly to test out the blogging functionality of my site, but perhaps there is some useless information here. Read on!

What is this blog going to be about?

I don’t really know how I would classify myself. I’m not a software engineer, programmer, cybersecurity professional, or anything like that. I am a college drop out, who, for better or for worse, has spent the last 2-3 years researching and using Linux, GNU/Linux, OpenBSD, etc. I will mostly be writing about those topics but I hope to talk about non-technical topics on my blog as well, the world needs more shouting into the void.

Read more...