Neo documentation

Neo is one of my laptops. It is an EEE PC 901. Its role as my main laptop has been taken by neo2 .

Passwords kept on neo

See keys and passwords stored on neo (login required)

Guest account

A guest account can be used in case some stranger has to use the computer. It must be disabled when not used. To enable it, run as root:

$ usermod -U guest

The password is standard.

To disable it, run as root:

$ usermod -L guest

guest is member of the audio and supplicant groups: it must be able to connecte through wireless networks but will not be able to know the passwords. The use of audio is permitted as well.

The use of sudo is not permitted. su can be used instead if that is really needed.

Tests setup

The following tests are run on neo:

  • The disk space test is run every 10 minutes. Removable devices are excluded.
  • The daemon test is run every 10 minutes, checking for various daemons (see configuration file in svmonitor-config for more).

Backup setup

This describes how neo is backed-up using darwrap. In short, everything but the multimedia content is backed-up over the net. There is also the possibility to do a home directory backup on a USB drive. This is implemented in the darwrap-config package.

Net backup

A darwrap profile named neo-s3 is run every 24h of uptime. It backups everything to an Amazon S3 bucket, john-smith, with path backup. The only content excluded is

  • The temporary and system kernel (/proc, etc...) files
  • External files from mounted devices (/mnt)
  • GPG secret keyring and random seed: this should be kept under physical control
  • multimedia files: too heavy, all of them should be kept on an external hard drive.
  • Currently active log files (i.e not archived log files)
  • Freenet temporary directories and data store

The backup configuration is stored in /etc/darwrap-config/config.xml.

EHD backup

A darwrap profile named neo-ehd can be run by the super-user. It backups everything to an external hard drive. The excluded content is the same as for the net backup.

Note that this is not automated. The advantage is that there is no need for network connectivity.

The script ehd-backup can be used to automate the process. It takes one optional argument: the darwrap actino to do ("new" by default).

The backup configuration is stored in /etc/darwrap-config/config.xml.

USB backup

A darwrap profile named neo-usb can be run by the user. It backups /home/sebastien to my main USB drive . The excluded content is the same as for the net backup.

Note that this is not automated, as I do not always have my USB drive plugged-in . The advantage is that there is no need for network connectivity, and that root privilege is not needed.

The script usb-backup can be used to automate the process. It takes one optional argument: the darwrap action to do ("new" by default).

The backup configuration files are stored in /home/sebastien/darwrap-backup.

Firefox backup

My firefox configuration and extensions are backed up using FEBE. A backup is done weekly to /home/sebastien/.mozilla/firefox/neo-backup.

It is advised to manually run a backup whenever a configuration change is made (that is, not very frequently).