USB Tethering a Portable Router into a Mobile WiFi Hotspot

Recently I came down to want a mobile hotspot when going out of home, something like Netgear Nighthawk M series, but able to flash custom firmware (OpenWrt/pfSense equivalents) and cheap. However, there is no such thing on the market even without budget consideration. So it has to be done with DIY, like USB tethering with a router. In the case of tethering or so called Ethernet over USB, we are using a phone as a cellular modem for our router. ...

November 25, 2024 · 2 min · Jun

Recovering from Data Loss due to LUKS Failure

Background Story Last week, I experienced a major data loss on my daily driver computer due to encryption failure. Last time I had encountered this sort of situation was over a decade ago with TrueCrypt on an external HDD and unfortunately lost everything that weren’t backed up. I’ve recovered everything from backup this time so I decide to document it. The entire storage on my daily driver is encrypted with LUKS and it suddenly fails on boot decryption. I don’t have the header backed up and have stopped using Timeshift for a long time due to it’s unschedulable which lead to chaotic performance impact. ...

September 24, 2023 · 3 min · Jun