{"id":3956,"date":"2018-11-21T18:04:49","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T18:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/?p=3956"},"modified":"2018-12-07T03:31:42","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T03:31:42","slug":"travel-laptop-tips-in-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/2018\/11\/21\/travel-laptop-tips-in-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Travel Laptop Tips in Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s one thing to give travel advice; it’s another to follow it.<\/em><\/p>\n

In past articles, I’ve written about how to prepare for a vacation or other
\ntravel when you’re on call. And, I just got back from a vacation where I
\nput some of those ideas into practice, so I thought I’d write a follow-up
\nand give some specifics on what I recommended, what I actually did
\nand how it all worked.<\/p>\n

Planning for the Vacation<\/h3>\n

The first thing to point out is that this was one of the first vacations
\nin a long time where I was not on call, directly or indirectly. In my
\nlong career as a sysadmin responsible for production infrastructure, I’ve
\nalmost always been on call (usually indirectly) when on vacation. Even if
\nsomeone else was officially taking over on-call duties while I was away,
\nthere always was the risk that a problem would crop up where they would
\nneed to escalate up to me. Often on my vacations something did<\/em> blow
\nup to the point that I needed to get involved. I’ve now transitioned
\ninto more of a management position, so the kinds of emergencies I face
\nare much different.<\/p>\n

I bring up the fact that I wasn’t on an on-call rotation not
\nbecause it factored into how I prepared for the trip, but because,
\ngenerally speaking, it didn’t<\/em> factor in except that I didn’t have to go
\nto as extreme lengths to make sure everyone knew how to contact me in
\nan emergency. Even though I wasn’t on call, there still was a chance,
\nhowever remote, that some emergency could pop up where I needed to
\nhelp. And, an emergency might require that I access company resources, which
\nmeant I needed to have company credentials with me at a minimum. I
\nimagine for most people in senior-enough positions that this
\nwould also be true. I could have handled this in a few ways:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Hope that I could access all the work resources I might need from my
    \nphone.<\/li>\n
  2. Carry a copy of my password manager database with me.<\/li>\n
  3. Put a few select work VMs on my travel laptop.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I chose option number 3, just to be safe. Although I’m not superstitious,
    \nI still figured that if I were prepared for an emergency, there was a
    \nbetter chance one wouldn’t show up (and I was right). At the very least,
    \nif I were well prepared for a work emergency, if even a minor problem
    \narose, I could respond to it without a major inconvenience instead
    \nof scrambling to build some kind of MacGyver-style work environment
    \nout of duct tape and hotel computers.<\/p>\n

    Selecting the Travel Computer<\/h3>\n

    As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, I recommend buying a cheap,
    \nused computer for travel. That way, if you lose it or it gets damaged,
    \nconfiscated or stolen, you’re not out much money. I personally bought a
    \nused Acer Parrot C710 for use as a travel computer, because it’s small,
    \ncheap and runs QubesOS pretty well once you give it enough RAM.<\/p>\n

    I originally planned on taking this same small travel computer with
    \nme on my vacation. I even prepped the OS and was about to transfer
    \nfiles over when I changed my mind at the last minute. I changed my mind
    \nbecause at my job we are working on integrating a tamper-evident BIOS called
    \nHeads into our laptops that, in combination with our USB security token
    \ncalled the Librem Key, makes it easy to detect tampering. You plug in the
    \nkey at boot, and if it blinks green you are fine; if it blinks red, it
    \ndetected tampering. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend taking a work laptop on
    \nvacation, but in this case, I wanted to beta-test this BIOS protection, so at
    \nthe last minute I decided to take my work laptop and try everything out.<\/p>\n

    Preparing the Travel Computer<\/h3>\n

    Another important part of travel preparation is to make backups of your
    \npersonal or work laptops. This is important whether you are traveling
    \nwith your personal laptop, a work laptop or a travel laptop, because in
    \nany of those cases, you will want to transfer some files to the laptop you
    \nhave with you, and you also want to be safe in case you lose that machine.<\/p>\n

    In my case, the backup process has an additional significance because
    \nI use QubesOS. QubesOS allows you to separate different workflows,
    \nfiles and applications into individual VMs that all run in a unified
    \ndesktop. You also can back up and restore those VMs independently. For
    \ntravel, this means I can perform a full backup of personal and work
    \nmachines before the trip and then restore just the VMs I need onto my
    \ntravel laptop. If the laptop is lost, broken or stolen, or if I want to wipe
    \nthe laptop, I don’t have to worry about losing data.<\/p>\n

    Since I was traveling with my work laptop, this meant that I performed my
    \nnormal backups of personal and work Qubes VMs, but then I just restored
    \nthe personal VMs I thought I might need on the trip onto my work
    \nlaptop. Otherwise, I would have restored both personal and work VMs onto
    \nmy separate travel laptop. Normally I also recommend that you spend a
    \nfull day working from your travel laptop after you have set it up,
    \nso you can make sure you have all of the access and files you need. Since
    \nI was traveling with the work laptop, I could skip this step, of course.<\/p>\n

    The Results<\/h3>\n

    So what were the results of all this travel preparation? I barely had to
    \nopen my laptop at all! I had one or two personal obligations that required
    \nthe laptop at the beginning, but I didn’t have to fire up any work VMs. Since
    \nI mostly kept my laptop in a bag, I did end up leaving it unattended
    \nquite a bit, so it was a good test for that tamper-detection (as you might
    \nexpect, the laptop wasn’t tampered with during the trip). Knowing that
    \nI could<\/em> fire up work VMs if I had to did give me extra peace of mind
    \nduring the trip, even though I never actually had to try it.<\/p>\n

    When I returned home, there was some clean up to do. Normally
    \nwith my travel laptop, this means a complete wipe and re-install of the OS
    \nso it’s ready for next time. In this case, since I was using my regular
    \nwork laptop, I just deleted all of the personal VMs I had added.<\/p>\n

    Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It’s one thing to give travel advice; it’s another to follow it. In past articles, I’ve written about how to prepare for a vacation or other travel when you’re on call. And, I just got back from a vacation where I put some of those ideas into practice, so I thought I’d write a follow-up … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “Travel Laptop Tips in Practice”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4701,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956\/revisions\/4701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}