asty.org – the homepage of Chris Allegretta

Rescuing Chromebooks from Google with Void Linux

Posted on August 7, 2025August 7, 2025 by chrisa

Just some more notes from my experiments with Void Linux, particularly on a converted Chromebook.

I have to first shout out as always the incredible work done by MrChromebox, as installing custom firmware onto your Chromebook to install Linux is the ultimate improvement you can make to your severely restricted device. In order do install it, you will have to disable the write protect on your device.

On modern Chromebooks, this is usually as easy as opening the device and disconnecting the battery, then connecting wall power and running the script in Developer Mode. As always, check compatibility with your device before trying to install the firmware.

Installing Void Linux is about as easy on a ‘liberated’ Chromebook as …

Snippets: Netbird runit script setup for Void Linux

Posted on May 29, 2025May 29, 2025 by chrisa

Just going to throw some stuff online for my own recollection, since I keep needing to create these files:
Void Linux Netbird init script for runit on Void Linux:

Basic setup and init script:

mkdir -p /etc/sv/netbird
cat <<END >/etc/sv/netbird/run
#!/bin/sh
exec 2>&1
[ -r conf ] && . ./conf
exec /usr/bin/netbird service run –config /etc/netbird/config.json –log-level info –daemon-addr unix:///var/run/netbird.sock –log-file /var/log/netbird/client.log
END

And of course for post-install:

chmod +x /etc/sv/netbird/run
ln -sf /etc/sv/netbird /var/service/netbird

I’ve not yet better integrated this into logging, but will edit this post if I do so.…

(Almost All) Smartphones Just Plain Suck Now

Posted on May 12, 2025May 12, 2025 by chrisa

Just a quick rant. This may be obvious to many folks, but wow, smartphones are so boring and awful (user-hostile) nowadays. They somehow find a way to get even worse. every. single. year.

Every phone release now is just a ever-increasing slab which looks just like all the other slabs. You get your iPhones and you get your Android phones, and that’s it. No company takes any risks at all, they just keep axing features (MicroSD, 3.5mm, replaceable battery, IR blaster, hw keyboard). And they’re increasingly locked down and controlled, so Apple and Google can spy on everything you do, and you just have to trust them to not leak too much sensitive info about you to their advertisers …

2025 Fediverse update: GotoSocial server and the Phanpy web client are great!

Posted on January 2, 2025January 2, 2025 by chrisa

Ok time for some updates. So I have been putting off maintenance of my personal Mastodon instance, and instead relying on another server for my main account, which just feels wrong for a decentralized social network. I’ll need to write up a separate article about my struggles with

So I started to look around for a server that’s a little more lightweight management-wise, as I just host myself (and a few bots), and after some search I found GotoSocial. GotoSocial (abbreviated GTS) is much like Mastodon in that it is also a Federated Activitypub server implementation, and thus compatible with Mastodon servers, but has much smaller resource requirements. It can run on a single board computer with 1GB …

The IPs they are a changin’

Posted on December 20, 2024December 20, 2024 by chrisa

Just a quick note that the IPs for asty.org and associated systems will be changing, as I’m finally moving my OVH Proxmox setup to the good old US of A, after my system in Canada dutifully performed excellently. Again I highly recommend them for anyone looking for self-hosting of any non-trivial services.

Personally I haven’t had as much time to write as I’ve been contracting, and it’s important to be able to justify all the work you’re doing when you present those invoices. But I’m hoping to find something permanent in systems administration or analysis. Keep in touch if you want more updates, I’m not the kind of person to vomit up details on social media so people can passively …

Malware is a Humorous Game About 90’s Windows Software Installer Add-Ons

Posted on September 20, 2024September 20, 2024 by chrisa

The question is how much fun can you extract from defeating evil software bundles?

When I saw the trailer for Malware, I was immediately transported back to the late 90s, when you just wanted to install a piece of Windows software, but had to navigate a hellscape of tiny additional checkboxes, each offering very vague but often ultimately useless or outright malicious ‘add on’ programs.

Virtual RAM ‘expanders’, download ‘optimizers’, offers to set your homepage to some website you’d never visit intentionally, ad ‘blockers’, which in many cases added more ads to your browsing experience, these were the inevitable add-ons (today we’d call them opt-out options) shoved into Windows software installers in that era. This originally started harmlessly of …