Debian

Keyboard layout configuration

Sample /etc/default/keyboard config:

XKBMODEL="pc104"
XKBLAYOUT="us,ru,fr"
XKBVARIANT=",phonetic,"
XKBOPTIONS="grp:lwin_toggle,grp:rwin_switch,grp_led:caps"

This config applies to both, console and X.

Building packages

Build custom kernel image

fakeroot make -j5 EXTRAVERSION=-salut KDEB_PKGVERSION=1 deb-pkg

Utilize X cores when building a package

export DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="parallel=5"

systemd

Mount tmp on tmpfs

cp /usr/share/systemd/tmp.mount /etc/systemd/system/
systemctl enable tmp.mount

iptables

Allow connections from select ip address

# cat /etc/iptables/rules.v4

*filter
:INPUT DROP [942325:57526190]
:FORWARD DROP [0:0]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [1363930378:213873202063]
-A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -i lo -m comment --comment "Allow loopback connections" -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p icmp -m comment --comment "Allow Ping to work as expected" -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -s xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/32 -j ACCEPT
COMMIT

Don't forget to install iptables-persistent. Then

service netfilter-persistent save

can be used to save the rules.

swap

Adding swap file

Create the swapfile:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/swap bs=1024 count=524288

fallocate -l 1G /var/swap

and then

chown root:root /var/swap
chmod 0600 /var/swap
mkswap /var/swap
swapon /var/swap
echo "/var/swap none swap sw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
swapon

Verify & fine-tune:

cat /proc/swaps

cat /proc/sys/vm/vfs_cache_pressure
sysctl -w vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50
echo "vm.vfs_cache_pressure = 50" >> /etc/sysctl.conf

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
sysctl -w sysctl -w vm.vfs_cache_pressure=1
echo "vm.swappiness = 1" >> /etc/sysctl.conf

Repositories

Jessie backports archive

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports main contrib non-free

Release specific notes

Trixie