What is the most duct-tape thing you've done to Linux?
tell me the most ass over backward shit you do to keep your system chugging?
here's mine:
sway struggles with my dual monitors, when my screen powers off and back on it causes sway to crash.
system service 'switch-to-tty1.service'
[Unit]
Description=Switch to tty1 on resume
After=suspend.target
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/switch-to-tty1.sh
[Install]
WantedBy=suspend.target
'switch-to-tty1.service' executes '/usr/local/bin/switch-to-tty1.sh' and send user to tty1
#!/bin/bash
# Switch to tty1
chvt 1
.bashrc login from tty1 then kicks user to tty2 and logs out tty1.
if [[ "$(tty)" == "/dev/tty1" ]]; then
chvt 2
logout
fi
also tty2 is blocked from keyboard inputs (Alt+Ctrl+F2) so its a somewhat secure lock-screen which on sway lock-screen aren't great.
My mother uses some software that runs in the browser for her shop. It can print out receipts and scan items. To do these things it has a small "sattelite" application that runs on the system and interacts with the printer and scanner. This software only runs on Windows and Linux doesn't have drivers for the scanner.
When I switched her over to Linux and found this out in the process I wanted to stop, give up and install windows.
But then I had a stupid idea.
I could run the sattelite program in a Windows VM and pass through the USB devices for receipt printer and scanner. The webapp uses requests to localhost:9998 to communicate with the sattelite so I set up a apache server that proxies these requests into the VM. I also prevented the VM from acessing the Interner so Windows doesn't update and screw everything up.
And it works. It has been in use for a week now and I've heard no complaints. I'm just praying to god it doesn't break
At least getting a snapshot of the Windows VM should be simple. And since it doesn’t connect to the internet and doesn’t update, restore should be quick and relatively easy.
Create a script to send important data records (if you need that for taxes or inventory data etc) as a nightly routine, that way you have a consistent database for any important records.
Then just create a restore point. If it breaks in 2 weeks, then you just relaunch it and know that it's going to kill itself in 2 weeks. A simple restart to that restore point solves everything.