I have never been someone who takes the time to customise their shell environment, perhaps I am missing out on all the hype around fish shell and atuin. Generally speaking my preference is to invest the time upfront to automate, implement health checks and recovery scripts so my time on the shell once the system is setup is minimal. Whilst I have been very pleased with how low maintenance my systems are I have found that when I do need to work on a system interactively that I am often searching through my history trying to recall some command I rarely use....

Background I run various services that require TLS and use Lets Encrypt to obtain certificates. The web host that registers my domains provides DNS services but there is no API meaning that all of my Lets Encrypt certificate requests and renewals require that I manually create the _acme-challenge DNS TXT record. Looking for opportunity to reduce maintenance and improve my homelab, DNS resolution and TLS are so fundamental that it makes sense to invest the time to implement a robust solution....

I was listening to the Late Night Linux podcast and a question was asked of the viewers, how do you keep your Linux systems secure. As someone who works in information security what stuck out me was that a most people took a very passive approach to security, they either trusted the distribution to provide packages with secure defaults or they isolated the system assuming it is not secure. There were some great answers like using the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks but benchmarks alone may provide a false sense of security in that they may not mitigate the risks that are most important for the specific system and it’s use case....

Why Even Consider a Password Manager If you have ever taken an interest in password security and data breaches you have no doubt come across Troy Hunts Have I been Pwned website. Have I been Pwned provides a free resource to quickly assess if you have been put at risk due to an online account having been compromised. As of April 2024 Have I been Pwned has indexed over 13 billion passwords from 770 separate data breaches....

Performing Actions at Logon in Linux I recently upgraded my Fedora Silverblue installation from 39 to 40 and sought to resolve two longstanding quality of life issues, the; OnlyKey client application autostarts at every logon Bluetooth soundbar requires reconnection at every logon. Solving the first issue paved the pathway to solving the second issue. Preventing the OnlyKey Application from Autostarting at Logon A quick Google search turned up on the Gnome Help page which specifically addressed how to add an auto start application for all users....