aarch0x40

Spoiler alert: is own code 😔

Archiving (catting files together) and compression are two different actions. This is true even in formats and zip or rar where the functions have always been a part of the same utility. They are separated in Unix because the Tape ARchiver wasn’t initially intended to produce a file on disk. The tar utility did eventually add compression but that’s not always desirable.

An archive of compressed files is just another archive regardless of the format.  Compressed files is also a bit vague a term.  Most video and music formats are compressed, so compressing them again doesn’t really add much value and can sometimes even produce larger sizes.

It’s closer to The Daily Show.

Reinstall shouldn’t be required but you’ll likely need to build a new initrd to ensure the boot process has the right drivers.

Starting to remember more about how this is done.  It’s been over 10 years since I had a similar setup working.  Are you VLANing first then slaving to the VLANS?

This post is a bit difficult to follow without being able to examine actual configurations. The bridged VLAN setup is a chain of configs in the RedHat configuration methodology. One of those configs is definitely clobbering the others but it seems you’re close. I’m sure a careful review of your work so far will be enough to find the error.

No problem!  Good luck and remember to be patient throughout this process.  Regardless of how it turns out, you will have learned a lot.

Full disclosure, I’ve never actually used mint specifically and I’m providing guidance from a more generalized perspective that would be applicable to any Linux distribution.  You may have to research the specifics for your OS.

Before I get into all of this, I should start by saying that it may be easier at your present skill level to perform an new installation over top your existing (no formatting).  Your best bet though is booting to the previous kernel.

The bootloader is a tiny program installed on the first bits of your bootable disk slice.  It can often present a menu to select different kernel / initrd (also called a initramfs) combinations that are available on that bootable slice.  This menu can be hidden and only display if a key is pressed on what is typically a completely blank screen or perhaps just a small flash on the screen before kernel messages start displaying.

It’s not so much that a backup of a kernel / initrd gets made but rather a new bootloader menu configuration, kernel and initrd image are added.   This leaves the previous boot setup available for just this kind of scenario.  The bootloader menu may also have a “Rescue” or similar option available.  If you’re unable to access this menu, it adds to the complexity of booting to the existing installation.

If you’re booting to a rescue image on a USB stick hopefully there’s a repair or rescue process available on it.  What you’d be looking to accomplish once booted to a workable space is to have a recovery process detect your hardware, generate the proper boot configuration with initrd containing all the appropriate supporting software.  While it is possible to do this by hand that is a bit much to explain in comments.

It sounds like perhaps there are either drivers missing from your initrd or kernel parameters from your boot loader. Is it possible for you to select the previous kernel setup from the boot loader? If not, the next step would be a rescue USB stick so you could start debugging both of those.

There’s a new magic word, doas.

This is interesting.  It looks like a gift card program.  They allow you to create a card and fund it using crypto up to $1,000 USD.  Once a funded card account is depleted it cannot be reloaded (this is how they skirt KYC).  Their accounts cannot be used for cash withdrawal (covers AML).  They do have a mechanism for moving funds between card accounts though.  The FAQ was able to answer all the questions I thought of regarding the program.

Seems worth a measured explore.  I used to work in a job that encouraged playing around with payment and money transfer networks a bit though.