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.
I'm using Gentoo with systemd and a customized kernel, and additionally I have the /usr partition LUKS encrypted.
Because /usr is absolutely essential for systemd to function, I configured dracut to make a specially crafted initrd which activates the luks lvm and prompts for the password to decrypt and mount /usr on startup before systemd init tries to run.
About a year or two ago, some update to dracut or some other dependency (assumption) caused the dracut generated initrd's to kernel panic. After multiple days of troubleshooting, I discovered that just copying forward an older initrd in /boot and naming it to match the new kernel, e.g. initramfs-6.6.38-gentoo.img , allows the system to boot normally .
So, my Gentoo is booting a kernel 6.6.something with a ramdisk generated in the 5.9 kernel era. I am dreading the day when this behavior breaks and I can no longer update my kernel 😳