Invisible zfs snapshot directory

I found out today something I am sure to forget.

In every zfs dataset there is an invisible directory (by invisible, I mean that it does NOT show up with ls -a) name .zfs. In side this directory are two subdirectories, shares and snapshots.

The snapshots subdirectory is a perfectly serviceable read-only access to all the snapshots. Viz:

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Setting up a mac remotely

I want to be able to get to my wife’s mac, in another city. She is an unsophisticated user, and I’d like to be able to help her when she needs help, but I can’t ask her to do very much setup. I also want to be able to provide backup for her files.

The first step was to outfit her with one of the little gateway pis previously described. Once that was done, we managed, together, to enable me to get to her mac with ssh, by way of the pi tunnel. And we managed to set up an account on her mac under my name.

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Gateway pi

I realized as I was writing a new post that I had never documented the gateway pi undertaking.

This started when a friend in the mountains got a new internet service where the ISP would not allow him (and therefore me) access to his router. As a result I could no longer use ssh to connect to his systems.

I solved this problem by setting his systems up to use a tool called autossh, with which I could have his system start, monitor, and keep running an ssh daemon with reverse tunnels open to my system. I could then reach him by attaching through the reverse tunnels.

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