Encrypt Your Dropbox Files with VeraCrypt

Tags

backup, linux, mac, organization, osx, tech, yosemite

UPDATE 2017-09-21: What follows is my workable but convoluted system for securing sensitive files in Dropbox. As an alternative, you may instead consider a zero-knowledge, encrypted backup service like SpiderOak. Easier. -JMT

There comes a time in every man’s life when he realizes that it’s totally not smart to keep sensitive personal documents in plain text on Dropbox.

VeraCrypt Mounting a Volume

For me, that time was last Monday. I spent this week searching for and experimenting with possible solutions, and I’ve now got a system in place that I’m pretty happy with, so I thought I’d share.
The problem, as I see it, is that the important stuff needs off-site backup — but the important stuff tends to be the same as the sensitive stuff, so it’s exactly the stuff that shouldn’t just be sitting on Dropbox. (Yes, I know Dropbox encrypts your data already. If that’s enough for you, more power to you.)

The system I’ve set up on my OS X Yosemite machine is this:

1. Create a folder in ~/Documents called Encrypted. Collect all my important stuff there.
2. Use VeraCrypt (free) to create an encrypted volume; we’ll call it EncryptedVolume.
3. Use Carbon Copy Cloner ($40; worth it) to clone ~/Documents/Encrypted to EncryptedVolume.
4. Place EncryptedVolume in ~/Dropbox.

Now you can just use your ~/Documents/Encrypted folder on an ongoing basis, and you don’t have to fool with opening encrypted volumes or anything else when you’re in a rush. Just use the folder as normal. And when you do have time, and/or you make important updates, use Carbon Copy Cloner to re-sync the folder to EncryptedVolume. CCC will only copy the updates, Dropbox will only upload the file difference, and nothing will be uploaded until the drive is encrypted and unmounted again. So everything is both efficient and secure during each step.

That’s the best compromise I could find between convenience and security. I chose VeraCrypt both because it’s open source and because it’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux. So if my computing situation changes and I’m ever in a pinch, I can open my encrypted documents on any computer* (I also chose to format EncryptedVolume as FAT for the same reason).

Of course, you can do this without CCC, as long as you don’t mind a little manual housekeeping. But CCC is already the bedrock of my backup solution, so it made sense to leverage it here, too.

*I had one hiccup on Linux — after Dropbox syncs EncryptedVolume to your Linux box, you need to give yourself write permission to the file, or the drive will be mounted read-only. You only need to do this once, the first time it downloads.

 

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16×9 Linux VMs Inside VirtualBox

Tags

CentOS, linux, Linux Mint, VirtualBox

Here’s a tutorial I put together this week about setting custom resolutions on Linux VMs inside VirtualBox. Topics covered:

• installing Guest Additions
• using xrandr and cvt to set custom resolutions
• creating a bash script to automate the process
• changing the resolution automatically at login

GnuCash: Show Outstanding Invoices

Tags

freelance, GnuCash, invoicing, linux

GnuCash Accounts Tab

UPDATED BELOW 2015-04-06

I recently switched to GnuCash for invoicing. While it’s quite powerful, it does have a bit of a learning curve. And while I’ve mostly been able to figure out what I need to know with the googles, one feature has eluded me: how to get GnuCash to show me a list of outstanding invoices.

It seems like a pretty obvious feature, but my searches for it always ended on a message board with someone telling me that it simply can’t be done. And while that may technically be true, I stumbled on a trick last night that is definitely close enough for funk.

And here’s the trick: it’s a two-step process. The menu item you need is only available from a certain tab. So:

GnuCash Customers Tab

Start on your Accounts tab. Click Business->Customers->Customer Overview. This will open the Customers tab. Now, with the Customers tab selected, click  Reports->Customer Listing.

This will open the Customer Listing tab, which shows you all of your clients and what they owe. It’s easy enough to ignore the clients with $0.00 next to their names, and that leaves you with a list of clients who have at least one outstanding invoice. Mind you, it still doesn’t show a breakdown of specific invoices – but you can click on the hyperlinked outstanding amount to see a breakdown of invoices for each client.

GnuCash Customer Listing Tab

It’s not ideal – I would really like a one-click solution that simply shows me every currently unpaid invoice – but it’s whole lot better than “it can’t be done.”

2015-04-06 – UPDATE

Reader Rich T. emailed me to suggest a further improvement to this method:

You stumbled on the same thing I did.  It might help to:  1. On the options dialog there is a checkbox to ignore zero balances.  2. "Save -> save report config as" will let you give it a name and recall it as needed.

Edit report options

So, picking up from where we left off above with the Customer Listing tab active, there is a button in the toolbar called Edit report options. Click this, deselect “Show zero balance items” toward the bottom of the dialogue, and give it a “Report name” up top. Click Ok, then go to File->Save Report As… and give your new report a name.

Now, you can simply click Reports->Preconfigured reports and choose your customized report. Even better, it will only show clients with outstanding balances. So much simpler!

Thanks, Rich T., for the suggestion!

Installing an HP Wireless Printer on Linux Mint

Tags

hp, hplip, linux, m127fw, mint

I recently purchased an HP M127fw printer/scanner, largely because of its rumored excellent support for Linux. Indeed, installing and getting it working was super easy – but only once I stumbled onto the right method. (First I read page after page about the HPLIP printing system and possible necessary plugins, and saw many different sets of (relatively) complicated instructions for installation, each one a beautiful and unique snowflake.)

But here’s all you have to do: run hp-setup, preferably as root:

sudo hp-setup

aaaaand that’s pretty much it. If you have Linux Mint 17 (and I’m sure many other distros, but this is what I can verify), then you already have hp-setup installed on your system. If not, you’ll have to use your package manager to get it. I’ve included screenshots below so you can see what to expect.

Above was the only moment of confusion. I can’t tell you the difference between the middle two options, but the selected option gave me what I wanted: the printer is now a device on my wireless network.

This annoyance is because I didn’t run it with sudo. Learn from my mistakes!

 

Above is how this window appeared initially. The only changes I made were to the printer name and test page checkbox:

Below you can see some of the options the driver provides. Scanning works, as well (although my Mac got much better results from the ADF).