Use a GPG smartcard with Thunderbird. Part 3: Setup Thunderbird

September 10, 2024 5 minute read

In previous blog posts, we discussed setting up a GPG smartcard on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD.

In this blog post, we will configure Thunderbird to work with an external smartcard reader and our GPG-compatible smartcard.

Before Thunderbird 78, if you wanted to use OpenPGP email encryption, you had to use a third-party add-on such as https://enigmail.net/.

Thunderbird’s recent versions natively support OpenPGP. The Enigmail addon for Thunderbird has been discontinued. See: https://enigmail.net/index.php/en/home/news.

I didn’t find good documentation on how to set up Thunderbird with a GnuPG smartcard when I moved to a new coreboot laptop, so this was the reason I created this blog post series.

New release Ansible role stafwag.ntpd, and clean up Ansible roles

August 25, 2024 2 minute read

I made some time to give some love to my own projects and spent some time rewriting the Ansible role stafwag.ntpd and cleaning up some other Ansible roles.

There is some work ongoing for some other Ansible roles/projects, but this might be a topic for some other blog post(s) ;-)

stafwag.ntpd

An ansible role to configure ntpd/chrony/systemd-timesyncd.

This might be controversial, but I decided to add support for chrony and systemd-timesyncd. Ntpd is still supported and the default on the BSDs ( FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD).

It’s possible to switch from the ntp implementation by using the ntpd.provider directive.

The Ansible role stafwag.ntpd v2.0.0 is available at:

• https://github.com/stafwag/ansible-role-ntpd
• https://galaxy.ansible.com/ui/standalone/roles/stafwag/ntpd/

Release notes

V2.0.0

• Added support for chrony and systemd-timesyncd on GNU/Linux
  • systemd-timesynced is the default on Debian GNU/Linux 12+ and Archlinux
  • ntpd is the default on all operating systems (BSDs, Solaris) and Debian GNU/Linux 10 and 11
  • chrony is the default on all other GNU/Linux distributes
  • For ntpd hash as the input for the role.
  • Updated README
  • CleanUp

Use a GPG smart card with Thunderbird. Part 2: setup GnuPG on FreeBSD

July 28, 2024 19 minute read

Updated @ Mon Sep 2 07:55:20 PM CEST 2024: Added devfs section
Updated @ Wed Sep 4 07:48:56 PM CEST 2024 : Corrected gpg-agent.conf

I use FreeBSD and GNU/Linux.

In a previous blog post, we set up GnuPG with smartcard support on Debian GNU/Linux.

In this blog post, we’ll install and configure GnuPG with smartcard support on FreeBSD.

The GNU/Linux blog post provides more details about GnuPG, so it might be useful for the FreeBSD users to read it first.

Likewise, Linux users are welcome to read this blog post if they’re interested in how it’s done on FreeBSD ;-)

www.wagemakers.be

May 30, 2024 less than 1 minute read

https://www.wagemakers.be

I’ve finally found the time to give my homepage a complete makeover. Yes, HTTPS is enabled now ;-)

The content has been migrated from WebGUI to Hugo.

It still contains the same old content, but I’ll update it in the coming weeks or when some of the projects are updated.

Mask27.dev

May 20, 2024 less than 1 minute read

I started my company last year and recently had the time to create my company’s website.

https://mask27.dev

Feel free to check it out.