HOWTOs

Various documents and HOWTO guides, for technology

Documentation
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Sysadmin & DevOps
PowerShell: Adding Privileges to a User
For PowerShell on Windows, adding a security privilege to a user takes more effort than one would expect. Here we show a method with no third party dependencies.
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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Server install & configure
Commit LBU (stores changes)
Once you are sure everything is correct for the initial boot into your configured system, commit (store) your changes.
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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Post-instal config
Configure SSH to only allow pubkey logins
Disallowing SSH login with only a username and password is a well known security best practise, therefore we implement it.
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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Post-instal config
Add pre-mount filesystem check
Where possible it is a best practise to safely check your filesystems before mounting them. Here we add the needed packages.
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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Post-instal config
Use encrypted LBU
Unless you need headless, or unattended reboots or power up, it is highly recommended to use an encrypted configuration backup.
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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Recommended tweaks
Configure off-system backups
You should backup your system. Really. Oh, and it should be to at least one other system.
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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Recommended tweaks
Enable enhanced shell prompt
Add colour and context information to the ash prompt.
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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Recommended tweaks
Add tmux
Tmux is a handy tool that gives the ability to have multiple (text) windows in a single terminal session, as well as persisting your session in case of disconnect.
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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Recommended tweaks
Edit message of the day (MOTD)
The default MOTD is potentially confusing, and is annoying in any event, once you have set up your system.
$An illustration of computer monitors with binary digits floating behind them\nin a globe formation. In the background is the late evening skyline of a modern metropolis.\n$
Blog
Feb 17, 2025
Ucode-based mountpoint command for OpenWrt
Due to OpenWrt issue 13873 the author needed a version of the mountpoint command for OpenWrt. Since they wanted to learn ucode, they coded the command in this interesting ECMAscript-like language¹. This may be moot as enabling the busybox mountpoint applet could be more space-efficient, but the author enjoyed the exercise.
Blog
Feb 11, 2024
Power BI M Code Date Table
For Power BI, if your data source does not already have a date dimension table, Microsoft strongly recommends adding one in Power Query M-code. Here we show how to do that for a fiscal year date table.
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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HOWTOs
Netboot Alpine Linux using iPXE
It can be especially useful to use network booting to create virtual machines without using install media on the VM. To do that we netboot with iPXE.
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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HOWTOs
Add etckeeper
While the LBU mechanism with backups allows restoring to previous state it lacks commented history. It also does not apply to ‘sys’ mode installs.
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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HOWTOs
Add man pages and other on-system docs
For many systems you should have plenty of available RAM and storage to add the online documentation (mostly in the form of man pages).
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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HOWTOs
Add nano and use as default editor
For many users vi (the default editor for Alpine) is difficult and confusing to use.
Documentation
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Alpine Linux as a server
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HOWTOs
Add etckeeper git remote for pushing on commit
Tracking configuration changes in etckeeper is great, but even better is storing in an off-system private repository.