nwildner's random ideas

: Laptop

Installing Arch Linux on encrypted ZFS and ZFSBootMenu

I'm not using this setup anymore due to the following bug I have reported - https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/17805 - I know some people have stable setups with ZFS, but mine wasn't anymore after I have faced this so, while I do intend to get back to this in the future, right now I'm not using it so, be advised that ZFS 2.3.x has this caveats and nasty bugs. Even FreeBSD 15-RELEASE provided zfs-2.4.0-rc4 by default instead of relying on 2.3 - https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.0R/relnotes/#storage-zfs

This is a straightforward tutorial on how to install Arch Linux on a ZFS Encrypted zpool, for those who are familiar with the Arch Linux installation process. The focus here is to provide knowledge on the ZFS part of the equation and not to replace the procedures that are already extensively documented at the Arch Wiki.

Some installation steps are redundant and there is plenty of material over the internet including this blog and the Arch Wiki.

/posts/2025-09-03-zfs-setup/

Secure your boot process part 2: Fedora and Unified Kernel images made easy with Dracut

I don't use Fedora anymore and these procedures might be considerably outdated. Fedora folks are working on a way to integrate and deploy [UKI by default](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Unified_Kernel_Support_Phase_2).

As you may notice, this is almost a part 2 of my Secure your boot process: UEFI + Secureboot + EFISTUB + Luks2 + lvm + ArchLinux. Except that here i’ll not talk about all the secureboot stuff that i’ve already ran into on my last blogpost. This one is specifically focused on how to achieve the same setup using Fedora.

This blogpost compiles my personal opinions around using bootloaders on EFI environments so, the classic “opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer” applies.

/posts/2021-04-10-secureboot-fedora/

PRIME and battery usage: sometimes it’s not what it seems to be

I don't own this laptop anymore, and now I have a ASUS which with a mux switch, a more beefy Intel UHD and also a more powerfull NVIDIA dGPU so, these metrics might not be true anymore and disabling the NVIDIA Gpu will bring battery gains. Intel iGPUs got to a point where they can handle pretty much the modern web animations of today.

PRIME is a technology used to manage hybrid graphics. It was meant to be a resource saver since you can configure it to use only the Integrated GPU, and render offload to the dedicated GPU whenever is needed. But that is not what happened in my real life situation.

/posts/2020-10-01-nvidia-reverseprime/

Secure your boot process: UEFI + Secureboot + EFISTUB + Luks2 + lvm + ArchLinux

This guide was created back in 2020, and while the methodology of deploying your own Secure Boot CA remains the same, more modern tools were introduced like sbctl which is the de facto standard for generating and deploying your CA or MOK.

This tutorial isn’t a basic setup how-to in a way you will learn how to install Arch Linux, neither is intended to replace the Installation Guide, This is a guide for those who want a laptop with data-at-rest encryption and a verified boot process using SecureBoot.

I’ll not be arrogant saying that this setup is “tampering-proof” since this also depends on your firmware manufacturer, but I believe that this is a notebook setup with good enough security.

/posts/2020-07-04-secure-your-boot-process/