Saab 9-3: Rear Pads and Disc Replacement

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Category: Vehicles

Published: Saturday, 14 November 2020 11:40

Written by Ben Tasker

Replacing the front discs on a Saab 93 is simple, however, the rears are a little more work (in fact, they're a pain in the arse), and you're going to some specific tools in order to achieve the job.

This was performed on a 2010 Saab 93 TTID, but the process should be the same for most model years (and may actually be more or less the same on the Vauxhall Vectra).

Be aware: some of the fixings are extremely tight and have limited access, there will almost certainly be periods where you'll wish you let the garage do the job.

Amongst the usual selection of tools and sockets etc, please ensure you have

• A selection of longbars/torque wrenches etc (you're going to need to find something that can fit)
• A E18 Torx socket to fit each of these. You cannot proceed without.
• A E20 Torx socket  (just in case)
• A deep 21mm socket
• An electric or air impact driver (you may be able to proceed without, but there's a strong chance of getting stuck)
• A small/pocket blowtorch
• A jack that can lift your car as high as possible (makes more room to work in on the hard bit)
• Brake rewind tool sized to fit a Saab (the "universal" 2 size ones don't) - I have this kit, the Saab needs disc "M" on there.

You will also need to ensure that you've ordered the correct size replacement discs for your car. You can quite easily ascertain what size you will need.

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Generating a Vanity Address for Version 3 Onions

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Category: Linux

Published: Friday, 20 November 2020 17:34

Written by Ben Tasker

Tor Hidden Services are accessed through a web address ending in .onion. Generally speaking these appear to be random strings of letters and numbers, though they're actually a representation of the public key generated when the operator created their hidden service.

Whilst it's possible to generate a V2 vanity .onion address with eschallot, V3 Onions use ed25519 requiring use of a different tool.

This documentation details how to generate a vanity .onion address for Version 3 Onions

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Automatically Mounting Secondary Encrypted Disk/Partition at Boot

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Category: Linux

Published: Friday, 09 October 2020 10:16

Written by Ben Tasker

There are a wide variety of use-cases for disk encryption, and the idea of automatically mounting an encrypted disk/partition without user intervention is an anathema to many of those - anyone who can take physical possession of your system will have the disk auto-mount for them.

However, there is a very simple use-case which benefits from being able to automount a second encrypted disk.

If you're storing data unencrypted on a drive and it fails, you're now potentially left with something of an issue, particularly if you intend to RMA it (return it under warranty) - could the drive be fixed, allowing someone else to pull that data off the drive (bearing in mind the manufacturer may fix the drive and sell as refurbished)?

Similarly, when you need to expand your storage, you hit a similar conundrum - do you trust disk wipes sufficiently to be willing to sell/pass the disk on (a particular concern with SSDs where data may previously have been written to a now bad block, so won't be overwritten by your wipe), or do you feel you have to physically destroy the disk, un-necessarily generating e-waste.

Using Full Disk Encryption (FDE) addresses both of these situations - the manufacturer might fix the disk, but without the key the data's just random bytes, similarly, for whoever buys your disk off ebay.

But, FDE can quickly become a major inconvenience at boot - your system will stop booting and ask you to provide the decryption passphrase. That's particularly problematic if you're talking about a headless system like a NAS, where you want things to come up working following a power cycle.

It's possible (trivial even) to configure so that the system uses a key stored on another disk (like your root filesystem, or if you prefer, a USB flash drive) so that the partition is automagically mounted.

This documentation details how to set up ecryptfs on a disk (or partition) and add it to /etc/fstab so that it automatically mounts at boot

All commands are run as root, so use sudo -i/su

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