Restoring from a SeedVault backup stored in Nextcloud
On Android there's a nice open source backup tool written by the cool folks at The Calyx Institute, called SeedVault. It backs up your apps and all of their settings, and re-installs your settings when you re-install an app. It's cool, it's good.
You can store your backups in a few different places: the phone, a usb stick plugged into the phone and Nextcloud.
On CalyxOS, GrapheneOS and LineageOS there is a section of the install process that offers to let you restore from your Seedvault backup. However, you don't have Nextcloud installed yet when you're at that part of the install. The installer promises to let you install Nextcloud, but it seems to try to do that using Google Play, which you don't have. So instead it just crashes. And when you continue the install you can no longer restore from the back-up -- going into the settings and selecting Backups starts the process of creating new backups.
So, here's the process:
- Install GrapheneOS
- Skip restoring from backup
- Download and install F-Droid
- Install Nextcloud from F-Droid
- Log into Nextcloud
- Enable Developer Options on your phone
- Enable USB Debugging, and allow your phone
- From computer:
adb shell am start-activity -a com.stevesoltys.seedvault.RESTORE_BACKUP - On the phone: tap Nextcloud
- Watch "Looking for backups" for a while
- SeedVault appears to exit, but do this again:
adb shell am start-activity -a com.stevesoltys.seedvault.RESTORE_BACKUP - Now you should be able to enter your backup passphrase and enjoy all your apps coming home again
https://www.wired.com/story/the-full-story-of-the-stunning-rsa-hack-can-finally-be-told/
Timo Hirvonen, a researcher at security firm F-Secure, which published an outside analysis of the breach, saw it as a disturbing demonstration of the growing threat posed by a new class of state-sponsored hackers.
is it? or is it a demonstration of the threat of centralization?
https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss
centralization is a ticking bomb
firefox search bar prefixes
When typing in the search bar, there are a bunch of prefixes you can use to narrow what Firefox is filtering on. Type one of these characters and then a space to get more precise auto-complete suggestions:
^: search your history%: search open tabs (includes mobile tabs!)*: search your bookmarks+: search pages you've tagged (you can do this when you bookmark something, i never have but it's aspirational #aspirationalcomputing)
sticky bit
There’s a bit you can set on a directory called the sticky bit. It makes it so a directory is “append-only”. That is, only the user who owns the file (or directory) can remove or move the file.
The man page (featured below) doesn’t make it clear, but a user also can’t edit a file owned by another user in the sticky place.
sticky — sticky text and append-only directories
A special file mode, called the sticky bit (mode S_ISVTX), is used to indicate
special treatment for directories. It is ignored for regular files. See chmod(2)
or the file /sys/stat.h/ for an explanation of file modes.
STICKY DIRECTORIES
A directory whose ‘sticky bit’ is set becomes an append-only directory, or, more
accurately, a directory in which the deletion of files is restricted. A file in
a sticky directory may only be removed or renamed by a user if the user has
write permission for the directory and the user is the owner of the file, the
owner of the directory, or the super-user. This feature is usefully applied to
directories such as /tmp which must be publicly writable but should deny users
the license to arbitrarily delete or rename each others’ files.
Any user may create a sticky directory. See chmod(1) for details about modifying
file modes.
HISTORY
A sticky command appeared in Version 32V AT&T UNIX.
BUGS
Neither open(2) nor mkdir(2) will create a file with the sticky bit set.
BSD June 5, 1993 BSD