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2026#

  • 12 min read

How I encrypt my disks on Linux, with an explanation of PBKDF2 and Argon2

I invested some time to understand the command cryptsetup luksFormat that is used for disk encryption on Linux and to figure out a secure choice of parameters that work best for my needs and the hardware I have. Within I present to you my learnings about encryption (Key Derivation Functions, KDF for short), my hardware-specific recommendations (I use a AMD Ryzen 5 5600G CPU and 32 GiB of DDR4 RAM), and how you need to adjust the parameters I chose for myself if you have less RAM than I use.

  • 21 min read

What I do first on a new Linux server

Especially in the 2020’s, as corporations and for-profit companies increasingly enshittify their services and surveil us, people are discovering the benefits of self-hosting open-sourced applications and owning the digital infrastructure they depend on. For most people that probably means renting a VPS from the likes of Linode, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, or Hostinger. Being solely responsible for the administration of a server that is accessible from the internet can be a scary thought due to all the botnets that will constantly try to break into your server from the moment it goes online. Apart from the general security worries regarding having a server accessible to anyone and everyone with malicious intentions over the internet, folks who are entirely new to self-hosting might not even know how to get started and what to do after giving a VPS provider their money. In this article I describe the first steps I take on a fresh VPS. If I’m wrong or miss a crucial step, you are welcome to contact me and I’ll integrate your corrections. 🙂