astralbijection

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 entrypoint, and therefore not actually executable in any meaningful way unless connected to yet another program.

If you can accept that some ELF files are executables and some aren't, then you can also accept that some CPIOs are executables and some aren't. What's the difference between ld.so unpacking an ELF file into RAM and running its entrypoint, and the Linux kernel unpacking an initramfs into RAM and running its entrypoint?

This one is an interpreter for CPIO files.

... 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 learning more about Linux while solving stupider and stupider problems posed for myself.

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 :)

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?

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.

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...

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?

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.

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...

All of those things get covered in parts 2, 3, and 4 :)

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 enough to say whether or not they will.

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, then getting rid of the .tw domain would be one of the many symbolic ways it would strip Taiwan of its status as a sovereign nation, not to mention all the other material ways they would do so. It would probably not be immediate, because in the past, the process of removing domains has involved transition periods (i.e. moving from .yu to .me and .rs).

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.