erdelynet.com

Managing dotfiles Chezmoi

mike@erdelynet.com (Michael Erdely) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 22:28:45 -0400

I had been trying to find a good way to manage my dotfiles for years. I tried having my $HOME be a git working directory. That worked well, but not really for keeping multiple systems in sync. I looked at stow but I didn’t reall like the way it worked. Then I found chezmoi. And it’s perfect!

The Basics

Chezmoi, stores its configuration in the source directory. On Linux/BSD, the default location is ~/.local/share/chezmoi. To get started, you’d run:

Looking for a new job

mike@erdelynet.com (Michael Erdely) — Thu, 21 May 2026 14:44:11 +0000

I find myself in the position to find a new job. I have been working as a contractor at the FDA for the last 6 1/2 years. Working with the Cybersecurity program as a Principal Splunk Engineer has been extremely rewarding and such an incredible learning experience. I had fun toys to play with and an endless amount of technology to learn about.

I would like to continue doing DevOps work employing the things I’m really good at:

Niri Window Manager

mike@erdelynet.com (Michael Erdely) — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 15:38:33 +0000

There I was: happily using Hyprland and BAM! Brodie Robertson shared a video about Niri – a scrolling window manager. It looked weird but intriguing, so I installed it. My plan was to see what it was like and go back to Hyprland. But we all know that’s not what happened.

Background

I’ve been using tiling window managers for a long time now. Back in late late 2000s/early 2010s, I was introduced to dwm. I ran dwm on my OpenBSD laptop for several years while also playing around with awesomewm, spectrwm, and cwm. Then I used a Mac for a while. But when I switched to Linux, I started using Ubuntu and its default environment, Gnome. But there were some things I didn’t like about Ubuntu, so I switched to Fedora, still using Gnome. But after a while, I switched over to Fedora’s KDE Spin. Again, though, I wasn’t too happy with Fedora and I found out about Arch Linux. Also, I really missed the keyboard-driven goodness that is a tiler.

Using Yad for ssh-askpass

mike@erdelynet.com (Michael Erdely) — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 15:31:00 +0000

ssh-askpass is an X11 application for passing a user’s SSH Key passphrase to ssh-add ssh-add(1). But it only works with X11. And I’m on Wayland now.

Solution

Yad. Yad is Yet Another Dialog ala Zenity or Dialog. It allows for taking in input and passing it to something else in a similar way to the way ssh-askpass worked with X11.

A screenshot

This is how my yad-askpass window looks:

My dot Files

mike@erdelynet.com (Michael Erdely) — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 15:53:00 +0000

Originally published: 2021-11-27.

So that I can share how I’ve configured several of my applications and systems on my laptop, I’ve created a new Git project for my dotfiles.

Hope you can use them to find a different way to accomplish your goals or, even better, you find a bug or have a suggestion for me.

What are dotfiles?

“dotfiles” are generally files that being with a period in the filename. By starting a filename with a period character, they are hidden by default from many graphical file managers and the ls(1) command. With ls specifically, you can list “dotfiles” by running ls -a or ls -al.

My Move to Hugo

mike@erdelynet.com (Michael Erdely) — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 13:55:33 +0000

Long gone are my days of hosting my website using a dynamic web content management system like Wordpress or some custom PHP thing. My needs are simple and a static site generator is perfect. A couple years ago, I was trying to decide which one to choose and started with Pelican and it worked fine but I wanted something that felt a little more modern. Enter Hugo.

Privacy Journey

mike@erdelynet.com (Michael Erdely) — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 17:10:00 +0000

It’s 2025 and the need for privacy is more important the ever. Over the next few weeks, I plan to document the things I’ve done to add privacy to my life.

I’ve made changes to my mobile phone, smart speakers around the house, services I use, and more.

This is my first Privacy post, but I plan to expand on my journey as I go.

My Favorite Smart Home Automations

mike@erdelynet.com (Michael Erdely) — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 13:35:00 +0000

As I wrote in my Home Automation Story post, I use Home Assistant to automate my Smart Home.

I’ve done the usual things like installing smart light switches and outlets and have certain lights come on and go off at set times. The easy stuff.

But I have a few automations that I’m really happy with and proud of.

Better still, it has a high AF (Approval Factor) from my wife.

Why I Chose Home Assistant OS

mike@erdelynet.com (Michael Erdely) — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 17:52:00 +0000

For setting up Home Assistant, there are several choices: Home Assistant OS, Home Assistant Container, Home Assistant Supervised, and Home Assistant Core.

I chose Home Assistant OS for a few reasons.

First Choice

Home Assistant Container

For those that know me, you’d probably be surprised that I went with Home Assistant OS. I’m a tinkerer and like to have full control over my systems.

Password Management with Bitwarden

mike@erdelynet.com (Michael Erdely) — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 17:28:00 +0000

In a past life, I managed both Lastpass and 1Password. Neither of them were something I wanted to use personally, so I was looking for something better.

In the mean time, I was using KeePassXC stored in Google Drive. And Holly and I also had a shared Keepass file stored in a shared directory so we could share passwords between us.

But then I learned about Bitwarden.