astralbijection

5 ms·

1.
by astralbijection 6mo ago
> An archive of files and directories is in itself not a program. Okay, but you can make the same argument to say that ELF files aren't programs in and of themselves either. In fact, some ELF files are dynamic libraries without an e
2.
by astralbijection 6mo ago
This one is an interpreter for CPIO files.
3.
by astralbijection 6mo ago
... I think you're reading a bit much into it. It's less that I couldn't afford to pay that, and more that I didn't want to pay that, and iterating on the solution I used to dodge that led me down a giant rabbit hole of
4.
by astralbijection 6mo ago
I did learn about systemctl switch-root after finishing my kexec solution, but I think if you're at the point of reimaging a server over the network, you probably don't care enough to shut it down correctly :)
5.
by astralbijection 6mo ago
Does it make it more cursed that the distro was built off of NixOS Anywhere, and then it theseus shipped NixOS Anywhere out of it?
6.
by astralbijection 6mo ago
To be honest, even this has plenty of room to go down. I get the feeling I could have squeezed a couple more MB off if I had actually cut things off of the default Nixpkgs busybox, and possibly also cut a couple of kernel drivers out.
7.
by astralbijection 6mo ago
Part 2 presents a fully automated proof of concept that does all of this: https://astrid.tech/2026/03/24/2/how-to-pass-secrets-between...
8.
by astralbijection 6mo ago
From what it sounds like, because you have a console and therefore aren't dependent on SSHD not getting overwritten, you can just dd the live running system here?
9.
by astralbijection 6mo ago
That script sounds extremely unhinged, and I mean it as a compliment :) Without spoiling too much, the command at the very end of the series does something adjacent to this.
10.
by astralbijection 6mo ago
It does get linked at the very bottom, though admittedly it could be made clearer. https://astrid.tech/2026/03/24/1/swap-out-the-root-before-bo...
11.
by astralbijection 6mo ago
All of those things get covered in parts 2, 3, and 4 :)
12.
curl > /dev/sda: How I made a Linux distro that runs wget | dd(astrid.tech)
172 points by astralbijection 6mo ago|65 comments
13.
by astralbijection 4y ago
I was curious about that myself, so I've updated the article with the results of some quick research. TL;DR: in 2010 it seemed like they'd keep it, but now, China can get rid of it if they wanted, and I'm not knowledgeable en
14.
by astralbijection 4y ago
Adding onto that, from my understanding of the political situation, China has been repeatedly affirming that the country of Taiwan is not a country, but is actually a rogue province and fully part of China. If China were to take over Taiwan
15.
by astralbijection 4y ago
Yeah, that was oversight. I typed up this thing in the span of a few hours and I was so caught up with the fall of the Soviet Union that I had forgotten about Hong Kong.