This seems like a very complicated way to achieve your goal! It sounds like sitting yourself down and giving you a stern talking to might be a beter aporoach.

Having said that, if you have these very important files that you don’t want to lose, please make sure they’re backed up somewhere off of your machine. Storage fails, and it’s a horrible feeling losing something important. Unfortunately doing so would defeat the approach you’re thinking of.

This might be a case of needing to reframe the question to get to the cause of the issue, and then solve that. So, why do you want to make it hard to reinstall your machine? Is it the amount of time you spend on it, the chance of screwing it up, needing it working, has it become a compulsion or something else? Maybe if we can get to the root of the issue we can find a solution.

With regard to TPM, it’s basically just a key store, so you can use it fir anything really, althought it’s normally used by generating a TPM key and using it to encrypt the key that’s actually used to encrypt your data, storing the encrypted key with the OS. Just reinstalling won’t wipe the TPM, but unless you made an effort to save the encrypted key it’ll be gone. Given your problem statement above it just adds to the data you’d need to save, which isn’t helpful.

Ok, I’m still not clear on exactly what you’re trying to achieve as I can’t quite see the connection between somehow preventing certain files being duplicated when cloning the disk and preventing yourself from reinstalling the system.

Bear in mind that reinstalling the system would replace all of the OS, so there’s no way to leave counter-measures there, and the disk itself can’t do anything to your data, even if it could detect a clone operation.

If what you’re trying to protect against is someone who knows everything you do accessing your data, you could look to use TPM to store the encryption key for your FDE. That way you don’t know the password, it’s stored encrypted with a secret key that is, in turn, stored and protected by your CPU. That way a disk clone couldn’t be used on any hardware except your specific machine.

Nothing can prevent a disk clone cloning the data, and there’s no way to make something happen when a disk is cloned as you’re not in control of the process.

If you wish to mask the existence of the files, use either full disk encryption, in which case cloning the disk doesn’t reveal the existence of the files without the decrypt password, or use a file based encrypted partition such as veracrypt in which case the cloner would just see a single encrypted blob rather than your file names.

Ultimately encrypting the files with gpg means they have already effectively ‘destroyed or corrupted’ themselves when cloned. If you don’t want to reveal the filenames, just call them something else.

If you could be a bit more specific about your threat model people may have better ideas to help.

Thanks a lot, I just sprained my brain trying to make sense of that.

It sounds like you’re actually more concerned about the data in the files not being able to ‘pop up’ elsewhere, rather than the files themselves. In thus case I’d suggest simply encrypting them, probably using gpg. That’ll let you set a password that is distinct from the one used for sudo or similar.

You should also be using full disk encryption to reduce the risk of a temporary file being exposed, or even overwritten sectors/pages being available to an attacker.

This is an approach to life sentences I’ve considered before; I would suggest the prisoner could only petition for execution after being incarcerated for a significant period (20 years or so maybe?) and having exhausted all possible legal appeals. The delay is there to ensure it’s not a decision taken in desperation and haste. By that point, if any new evidence to exonerate them is going to turn up, it probably has, although I acknowledge that’s not always the case.

I’m not sure I’d equate it to voluntary euthenasia as the prisoner isn’t leaving jail alive either way. On the other hand, I can see why linking the two makes sense too.

Putting a simple preseed file on a debian install image is probably going to be your best bet. Assuming you can run a VM on your current machine it shouldn’t be too difficult to test it until you’re happy with it.

It’s going to be a balance between your time getting an automated approach to work and the cost/effort of getting a monitor. Getting preseed working can be a bit fiddly, but it does mean you’ve learnt a new skill, getting a monitor sounds like it’ll be a pain, and you might only need it once.

Yes, that’ll work too, it does involve adding the disk to your machine temporarily though, so just be carefully which disk you format to do it. Please don’t ask why I say that, it brings back painful memories…

So you’re willingly admitting that you deliberately increased the chance of Trump winning by not voting tactically? I know it’s a rotten system, but you have to work with what’s in front of you. The approach you espouse makes it look like you’re actually a right wing saboteur rather than anything left wing.

While I agree with most people here that finding a keyboard and screen would be the easiest option, you do have a couple of other options:

• Use a preseed file A preseed lets the installer run completely automatically, without user intervention. Get it to install a basic system with SSH and take it from there. You’ll want to test the install in a VM, where you can see what’s going on before letting it run on the real server. More information here: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed

• Boot from a live image with SSH Take a look at https://wiki.debian.org/LiveCD in particular ‘Debian Live’. It looks like ssh is included, but you’d want to check the service comes up on boot. You can then SSH to the machine and install to the harddrive that way. Again, test on a VM until you know you have the image working, and know how to run the install, then write it to a USB key and boot the tsrget server from that.

This all assumes the target server has USB or CD at the top of its boot order. If it doesn’t you’ll have to change that first, either with a keyboard and screen, or via a remote management interface sych as IPMI.

It’s obviously just a glitch in the matrix, and you may be the chosen one for noticing.

I got a 504 server error the first time I posted, but apparently it worked anyway.

I was doing fine, seeing two cows, right up until I read your comment, and now I see it as some sort of weird giraffe like creature with short legs and a surprising ability to balance even with its neck stretched out that far.

I was doing fine, seeing two cows, right up until I read your comment, and now I see it as some sort of weird giraffe like creature with short legs and a surprising ability to balance even with its neck stretched out that far.

Oh I absolutely agree that making sure people actually vote is important, and it’s something a parties supporters can do. You can bet that Republican voters will be pushing each other, and Dems need to be just as dedicated. The thing is, that’s a whole lot easier when your candidate is saying and doing things you agree with, and not doing stuff you abhor. That’s the nit the party and candidate have control over and should be tuning. It wouldn’t be easy to make big changes, but even more moderate changes would be helpful. Biden seems to finally be changing his tune on Isreal a bit at the moment, the question is whether he’s irreconcilably alienated too many voters already, or if he can win them back.

Expecting people to vote for Biden despite disliking his policies because the alternative is worse is logical, but might, I fear, be excessivly idealistic. The more Biden and the Dems listen to their base the easier this will be.

I think you’re significantly misunderstanding whst they’ve said, or at least I get something entirely different from it.

The two of you seem to actually agree on almost everything, including that the Dems don’t have an overwhelming majority (I can’t see where they’ve said otherwise anyway). You seem to be saying that people should vote Dem regardless of what they’re doing, which they, and I agree with. They’re trying to point out that a) the Dems probably can’t win over solid Rep voters, and that trying to by making policies that would appeal to them risks alienating the Dem base, and more importantly swing voters and b) making policies that appeal to the Dem base and potential swing votes, despite the fact they might further alienate Rep voters is likely to result in a larger voter turnout for them.

A lot of the things Biden is currently doing seem to be aimed at trying to get Republican voters on-side, but are quite unpopular with the Dem base. Precisely because they don’t have a large majority losing any voters could be catastrophic.

The two parties, and their presidential candidates, are fairly evenly balanced in votes at the moment, both with a solidly entrenched core, a periphery of less commited voters, and the swing voters inbetween the sides. The candidate that wins is likely to be the one who loses fewest of their periphery voters and alienates the fewest swing voters. Making policie to try to ‘poach’ voters from the other party’s core is a lost cause, but might cause some of your potential voters to stay home even if they don’t vote Rep.

You two seem to be somewhat talking at cross purposes.

As far as I can see, what they’re saying is that the Dem candidate needs to apeal to Dem voters and those who could be persuaded to vote Dem, to ensure their vote. If Biden turns enough of them off and they don’t vote he risks losing. On the other hand dyed in the wool Republican voters probably can’t be turned, so there’s no point trying to apeal to them.

You seem to be saying that not voting for Biden, despite him being unpopular, risk letting Trump in. That is also true, and it is vital that Trump is stopped, they’re just pointing out that that is easier if Biden listens to his base, rather than population wide surveys.

!support@lemmy.world might be a good place for that.

am I still vunerable to not being able to tell reality from talking points?

You’re absolutely still vulnerable, and the fact you sometimes notice you’re in an echo chamber means that when you don’t spot it you’re more likely to think you’re not in one, even if you are. It’s an interesting dilemma; if you’re not aware then you risk falling into any echo chamber, but the more aware you are of a trap like this normally, the more you risk being sucked in due tp misplaced confidence when you miss the signs.

Stay alert, keep questioning why you agree with others and welcome to Lemmy!

Look everyone! That Weird Guy over there is Crazy Hair Guy!