Create a NAS with Redundancy Using Snapraid

Like a lot of techie people, I run a home server to centralize access to music, video's, photos and other files. Because I have built my own server using a HP Proliant Microserver running Ubuntu, I need to do a bit more work myself in order to group my disks together in a redundant pool. This post will focus on how I've configured AUFS to expose my disks as a single volume and configured Snapraid to add redundancy and bitrot protection to the data.


Pass Credentials to the awslogs Docker Logging Driver on Ubuntu

Last year docker added support for multiple logging drivers. This makes it very easy to integrate your docker containers with a centralized log management system in a transparent way. If you want to use the AWS Cloudwatch driver you will need to supply the docker daemon with access keys, which proved to be trickier than expected. Here's how I managed to get it running.


Disable Right Click Zone In Linux On A Synaptics Touchpad

By default the Synaptics driver on Linux will treat the bottom right corner of your touchpad as a right click button, even if you have a macbook like trackpad or Logitech T650 touchpad. I have become used to clicking with 2 fingers for a right click, so the that zone is more annoying than useful. Here's how to disable it.


Multitouch Trackpad Gestures with Touchegg

Support for multitouch gestures on Linux has been steadily increasing in the past years. I recently bought a Logitech T650 touchpad and all the basics worked right of the box: moving the cursor, two finger click for right click, two finger swipes for scrolling through documents. Unfortunately it wasn't immediately obvious how I could configure anything more (like pinching gestures, or 3 finger gestures). Here's how you can unlock its full power.


Firefox Desktop Reader Mode

The reader mode in the Android version of Firefox was released a few years ago with a lot of fanfare. In a recent update, the desktop version received the same functionality, but it doesn't seem to be enabled by default on all installations.