Is it possible to force a corruption if a disk clone is attempted?

Anything that corrupts a single file would work. You could certainly change your own disk cloning binaries to include such functionality, but if someone were accessing your data directly via their own OS, that wouldn’t be effective. I don’t know of a way to circumvent that last part other than ensuring that the data isn’t left on disk when you’re done. For example, you could use a ramdisk instead of non-volatile storage. You could delete or intentionally corrupt the volume when you unmount it. You could split the file, storing half on your USB flash drive and keeping the other half on your PC. You could XOR the file with contents of another file (e.g., one on your USB flash drive instead of on your PC) and then XOR it again when you need to access it.

What sort of attack are you trying to protect from here?

If the goal is plausible deniability, then it’s worth noting that VeraCrypt volumes aren’t identifiable as distinct from random data. So if you have a valid reason for having a big block of random data on disk, you could say that’s what the file was. Random files are useful because they are not compressible. For example, you could be using those files to test: network/storage media performance or compression/hash/backup&restore/encrypt&decrypt functions. You could be using them to have a repeatable set of random values to use in a program (like using a seed, but without necessarily being limited to using a PRNG to generate the sequence).

If that’s not sufficient, you should look into hidden volumes. The idea is that you take a regular encrypted volume, whose free space, on disk, looks just like random data, you store your hidden volume within the free space. The hidden volume gets its own password. Then, you can mount the volume using the first password and get visibility into a “decoy” set of files or use the second password to view your “hidden” files. Note that when mounting it to view the decoy files, any write operations will have a chance of corrupting the hidden files. However, you can supply both passwords to mount it in a protected mode, allowing you to change the decoy files and avoid corrupting the hidden ones.

It sounds like you want these files to be encrypted.

Someone already suggested encrypting them with GPG, but maybe you want the files themselves to also be isolated, even while their data is encrypted. In that case, consider an encrypted volume. I assume you’re familiar with LUKS - you can encrypt a partition with a different password and disable auto-mount pretty easily. But if you’d rather use a file-based volume, then check out VeraCrypt - it’s a FOSS-ish [1], cross-platform tool that provides this capability. The official documentation is very Windows-focused - the ArchLinux wiki article is a pretty useful Linux focused alternative.

Normal operation is that you use a file to store the volume, which can be “dynamic” with a max size or can be statically sized (you can also directly encrypt a disk partition, but you could do that with LUKS, too). Then, before you can access the files - read or write - you have to enter the password, supply the encryption key, etc., in order to unlock it.

Someone without the password but with permission to modify the file will be capable of corrupting it (which would prevent you from accessing every protected file), but unless they somehow got access to the password they wouldn’t be able to view or modify the protected files.

The big advantage over LUKS is ease of creating/mounting file-based volumes and portability. If you’re concerned about another user deleting your encrypted volume, then you can easily back it up without decrypting it. You can easily load and access it on other systems, too - there are official, stable apps on Windows and Mac, though you’ll need admin access to run them. On Android and iOS options are a bit more slim - EDS on Android and Disk Decipher on iOS. If you’re copying a volume to a Linux system without VeraCrypt installed, you’ll likely still be able to mount it, as dm-crypt has support for VeraCrypt volumes.

• 1 - It’s based on TrueCrypt, which has some less free restrictions, e.g., c. Phrase "Based on TrueCrypt, freely available at http://www.truecrypt.org/" must be displayed by Your Product (if technically feasible) and contained in its documentation.”

If you use that docker compose file, I recommend you comment out the build section and uncomment the image section in the lemmy service.

I also recommend you use a reverse proxy and Docker networks rather than exposing the postgres instance on port 5433, but if you aren’t familiar with Docker networks you can leave it as is for now. If you’re running locally and don’t open that port in your router’s firewall, it’s a non-issue unless there’s an attacker on your LAN, but given that you’re not gaining anything from exposing it (unless you need to connect to the DB directly regularly - as a one off you could temporarily add the port mapping), it doesn’t make sense to increase your attack surface for no benefit.

I haven’t personally used any of these, but looking them over, Tipi looks the most encouraging to me, followed by Yunohost, based largely on the variety of apps available but also because it looks like Tipi lets you customize the configuration much more. Freedom Box doesn’t seem to list the apps in their catalog at all and their site seems basically useless, so I ruled it out on that basis alone.

I am trying to avoid having to having an open port 22

If you’re working locally you don’t need an open port.

If you’re on a different machine but on the same network, you don’t need to expose port 22 via your router’s firewall. If you use key-based auth and disable password-based auth then this is even safer.

If you want access remotely, then you still don’t have to expose port 22 as long as you have a vpn set up.

That said, you don’t need to use a terminal to manage your docker containers. I use Portainer to manage all but my core containers - Traefik, Authelia, and Portainer itself - which are all part of a single docker compose file. Portainer stacks accept docker compose files so adding and configuring applications is straightforward.

I’ve configured around 50 apps on my server using Docker Compose with Portainer but have only needed to modify the Dockerfile itself once, and that was because I was trying to do something that the original maintainer didn’t support.

Now, if you’re satisfied with what’s available and with how much you can configure it without using Docker, then it’s fine to avoid it. I’m just trying to say that it’s pretty straightforward if you focus on just understanding the important parts, mainly:

• docker compose
• docker networks
• docker volumes

If you decide to go that route, I recommend TechnoTim’s tutorials on Youtube. I personally found them helpful, at least.

I’m not addressing anything Gitea has specifically done here (I’m not informed enough on the topic to have an educated opinion yet), but just this specific part of your comment:

And they also demand a CLA from contributors now, which is directly against the idea of FOSS.

Proprietary software is antithetical to FOSS, but CLAs themselves are not, and were endorsed by RMS as far back as 2002:

In contrast, I think it is acceptable to … release under the GPL, but sell alternative licenses permitting proprietary extensions to their code. My understanding is that all the code they release is available as free software, which means they do not develop any proprietary softwre; that’s why their practice is acceptable. The FSF will never do that–we believe our terms should be the same for everyone, and we want to use the GPL to give others an incentive to develop additional free software. But what they do is much better than developing proprietary software.

If contributors allow an entity to relicense their contributions, that enables the entity to write proprietary software that includes those contributions. One way to ensure they have that freedom is to require contributors to sign a CLA that allows relicensing, so clearly CLAs can enable behavior antithetical to FOSS… but they can also enable FOSS development by generating another revenue stream. And many CLAs don’t allow relicensing (e.g., Apache’s).

Many FOSS companies require contributors to sign CLAs. For example, the FSF has required them since 2005 at least, and its CLA allows relicensing. They explain why, but that explanation doesn’t touch on why license reassignment is necessary.

Even if a repo requires contributors sign a CLA, nobody’s four freedoms are violated, and nobody who modifies such software is forced to sign a CLA when they share their changes with the community - they can share their changes on their own repo, or submit them to a fork that doesn’t require a CLA, or only share the code with users who purchase the software from them. All they have to do is adhere to the license that the project was under.

The big issue with CLAs is that they’re asymmetrical (as opposed to DCOs, which serve a similar purpose). That’s understandably controversial, but it’s not inherently a FOSS issue.

Some of the same arguments against the SSPL (which is not considered FOSS because it is so copyleft that it’s impractical) being considered FOSS could be similarly made in favor of CLAs. Not in favor of signing them as a developer, mind you, but in favor of considering projects that use them to be aligned FOSS principles.

Is it supposed to sound like an airplane noise?

Do they also pronounce the E? “Guh-no-meh?”

I was able to read it by clicking the stop button mid-refresh, but it took me a few tries.

They do, but they’re a bit more expensive. They have a list at https://www.brother-usa.com/color-laser-all-in-ones (that includes printers without scanners but you can add a filter).

Ah, in that case I probably could have gotten even more life out of the starter toner - I ordered a replacement as soon as I got the warning about it being low but my prints weren’t washed out at all by the time I replaced it.

I have the Brother HL-L3270CDW, which prints in color. Ran me about $300 (it’s $270 directly from Brother now) plus the cost of the high yield toner cartridges I bought with it, but you can probably get away with the included toner for a while - with my B&W Brother the included toner lasted me over a year. It says the starters are supposed to last 1000 pages and the high yield 2300, but I’m pretty sure those numbers are very low based on my own usage estimates. I definitely went through more than two 500 page packs of paper in that first year.

It doesn’t have a built-in scanner but it does have:

• wireless and ethernet connectivity, plus support for AirPrint, cloud printing, etc
• direct USB connectivity (though I’ve never used it)
• duplex printing (not for A4 apparently)
• a 150 or so sheet capacity tray (advertised 250) that can handle letter, legal, A4, and anything smaller all the way down to 3” x 4.57”

It says it doesn’t support printing card stock but I’ve printed small amounts (30 or so sheets) at a time, largely without issues. That said, the only times I’ve had the printer jam, I was printing card stock, so maybe there’s some truth to that recommendation.

I haven’t used third party toner but my understanding is that as long as it’s good quality the printer will work fine. It doesn’t force you to only use first party toner.

The color quality has been good enough for my purposes - substantially better than the consumer inkjet printers I used like 20 years ago, but worse than current inkjets. That said, if photo quality color is the main thing your parents print and they print regularly, my recommendation - based on research, not personal experience - is an Epson EcoTank. From their site the entry-level model (the ET-2800) is $200 and comes with about 3k pages worth of ink (and replacement ink bottles have even more capacity). Other commenters have covered it in depth.

I have a Brother color laser printer and it’s great. Just as reliable as my B&W Brother laser printer. I don’t use it to print photographs, though - I assume your recommendation is more for people who need photo quality color?

I’ve never used Radicale, but I just looked it up and the homepage talks about enabling authentication. It also supports auth via reverse proxy headers, which is great for anyone who wants to use Authelia, KeyCloak, or another similar solution. By contrast, as far as I can tell, Baikal doesn’t support reverse proxy auth, though it does seem to let you set up auth through the web interface.

Yes, but not really. You can have multiple users but not multiple libraries.

If you need/want a robust multi-user experience, specifically with private personal library support, then Photoprism isn’t going to work, unfortunately.

• Free:
  • You can create multiple Admin users in the free version, but they all can see and delete everything (unless you don’t give Photoprism delete access)
• Paid (Essentials or Plus)
  • you can create “User” users who can upload photos - but they still have access to your full library
  • you can create “Viewer” users who can’t see private photos (but they also can’t upload photos).
  • you can share links to albums that are viewable by anyone with the link

I’ve been using it single user and it’s been great, though I should add the caveat that I upload my photos to my server using Photosync and don’t give Photoprism write/delete access to my library, so no uploads come from it. I had been using Photosync for years before even hearing about Photoprism so it just fit very neatly into my existing process.

Multi user features are effectively paywalled and not technically FOSS due to not allowing commercial use, but roles are documented at https://docs.photoprism.app/user-guide/users/roles/ and there’s more info at https://docs.photoprism.app/user-guide/users/libraries/

If Photoprism Plus/Essentials features could work for you, but the ongoing subscription is an issue, then you should know that - unless this has changed - you can sub for one month on Patreon or Github, use the info they provide to upgrade to using the Essentials or Plus features, and then cancel the subscription. I still have an ongoing one but I didn’t connect it to my Patreon account or anything so I don’t think anything would change (except for me no longer getting support, if I needed it) if I canceled it.

If you haven’t already ruled it out, I recommend checking out Photoprism. It was the first app I ever self-hosted using Docker and I haven’t needed to change my config because of breaking changes yet.

Have you considered not using the Home Assistant OS? You don’t need to run it to use Home Assistant. You can instead set your host up with some other OS, like Debian, and then run Home Assistant in a docker container (or containers, plural) and run any other containers you want.

I’m not doing this myself so can’t speak to its limitations, but from what I’ve heard, if you’re familiar with Docker then it’s pretty straightforward.

A lot of apps use hard coded paths, so using a subdomain per app makes it much easier to use them all. Traefik has middleware, including stripPrefix, which allow you to strip a path prefix before forwarding the path to the app, though - have you tried that approach?

For the former use case, have you considered a dedicated solution? For example: https://libimobiledevice.org/

I don’t think they contributed to openairplay, but they mentioned in an open issue in the openairplay repo that they had created a separate repo to handle the auth piece. Strangely I can’t find the issue now, but this is the repo I was talking about for that: https://github.com/openairplay/AirPlayAuth

That all said, it pyatv will work for you it looks like a much better bet, anyway. Good luck!