bobpeers -> blog

I decided to give GPA a try just to see how easy it is to encrypt files on Linux. The program installed no problem using yum.

# yum install gpa

Upon starting I created a key (when the warning says this takes a while it’s no lie, it took about 5 minutes on my computer but I’ve since read that it’s a good idea to press some keys and move the mouse to generate random data faster) and then encrypted a test file, no problem there.

Next I tried to decrypt the same file but I just got a warning saying ‘Wrong Passphrase’, I understand the warning but the problem is that I never get prompted to enter the passphrase! Looks like I’ll have to learn the command line instead.

It’s also a shame that encryption is not better integrated into the file manager. In Windows it’s certainly very easy to encrypt files from Windows Explorer, even through the context menu, I’d really like to see the same in Gnome.

After getting SSH working on my Diskstation DS-106e so I can log in using a public/private key I’m thinking about installing the GNU screen program. This is incredibly useful as it allows a single terminal to host multiple sessions so you can, for example, start a session to download a large file and then open a new session and continue working. Even more so over SSH as you only get one terminal per SSH connection so it avoids opening multiple SSH connection just to run multiple commands.

You can also detach the sessions, log off from the SSH session and then later log back on, reattach the session and continue from where you left off. It’s really useful for long running tasks that you need to monitor.

There’s a great Red Hat Magazine article showing the basics plus how to set up a .screenrc config file to automatically start sessions or add a status bar to the bottom.

The only other option is to use the nohup command but this does not allow for monitoring progress of a program.

The main problem is that to install screen I need to first install bootstrap but like many people I’m slightly afraid of bricking my Diskstation.

Maybe I’ll add this to the Synology feature request forum in the meantime.

Diskstation Port 80 not responding

On a related note if I enter the admin pages for my Diskstation and enable https connections then my Diskstation no longer listens on port 80, I’ll have to look into this more when I have the time.