Developer Successfully Boots Up Linux on Google Drive (ersei.net) 42
Its FOSS writes:
When it comes to Linux, we get to see some really cool, and sometimes quirky projects (read Hannah Montana Linux) that try to show off what's possible, and that's not a bad thing. One such quirky undertaking has recently surfaced, which sees a sophomore trying to one-up their friend, who had booted Linux off NFS. With their work, they have been able to run Arch Linux on Google Drive.
Their ultimate idea included FUSE (which allows running file-system code in userspace). The developer's blog post explains that when Linux boots, "the kernel unpacks a temporary filesystem into RAM which has the tools to mount the real filesystem... it's very helpful! We can mount a FUSE filesystem in that step and boot normally.... " Thankfully, Dracut makes it easy enough to build a custom initramfs... I decide to build this on top of Arch Linux because it's relatively lightweight and I'm familiar with how it work."
Doing testing in an Amazon S3 container, they built an EFI image — then spent days trying to enable networking... And the adventure continues. ("Would it be possible to manually switch the root without a specialized system call? What if I just chroot?") After they'd made a few more tweaks, "I sit there, in front of my computer, staring. It can't have been that easy, can it? Surely, this is a profane act, and the spirit of Dennis Ritchie ought't've stopped me, right? Nobody stopped me, so I kept going..." I build the unified EFI file, throw it on a USB drive under /BOOT/EFI, and stick it in my old server... This is my magnum opus. My Great Work. This is the mark I will leave on this planet long after I am gone: The Cloud Native Computer.
Despite how silly this project is, there are a few less-silly uses I can think of, like booting Linux off of SSH, or perhaps booting Linux off of a Git repository and tracking every change in Git using gitfs. The possibilities are endless, despite the middling usefulness.
If there is anything I know about technology, it's that moving everything to The Cloud is the current trend. As such, I am prepared to commercialize this for any company wishing to leave their unreliable hardware storage behind and move entirely to The Cloud. Please request a quote if you are interested in True Cloud Native Computing.
Unfortunately, I don't know what to do next with this. Maybe I should install Nix?
Their ultimate idea included FUSE (which allows running file-system code in userspace). The developer's blog post explains that when Linux boots, "the kernel unpacks a temporary filesystem into RAM which has the tools to mount the real filesystem... it's very helpful! We can mount a FUSE filesystem in that step and boot normally.... " Thankfully, Dracut makes it easy enough to build a custom initramfs... I decide to build this on top of Arch Linux because it's relatively lightweight and I'm familiar with how it work."
Doing testing in an Amazon S3 container, they built an EFI image — then spent days trying to enable networking... And the adventure continues. ("Would it be possible to manually switch the root without a specialized system call? What if I just chroot?") After they'd made a few more tweaks, "I sit there, in front of my computer, staring. It can't have been that easy, can it? Surely, this is a profane act, and the spirit of Dennis Ritchie ought't've stopped me, right? Nobody stopped me, so I kept going..." I build the unified EFI file, throw it on a USB drive under /BOOT/EFI, and stick it in my old server... This is my magnum opus. My Great Work. This is the mark I will leave on this planet long after I am gone: The Cloud Native Computer.
Despite how silly this project is, there are a few less-silly uses I can think of, like booting Linux off of SSH, or perhaps booting Linux off of a Git repository and tracking every change in Git using gitfs. The possibilities are endless, despite the middling usefulness.
If there is anything I know about technology, it's that moving everything to The Cloud is the current trend. As such, I am prepared to commercialize this for any company wishing to leave their unreliable hardware storage behind and move entirely to The Cloud. Please request a quote if you are interested in True Cloud Native Computing.
Unfortunately, I don't know what to do next with this. Maybe I should install Nix?
How is this news? (Score:3, Interesting)
Instructions here: https://documentation.suse.com... [suse.com]
Google Drive ultimately is and also has HTTPS, just like Dropbox or any other file sharing service you can make a link available for direct download.
Then from there you can mount all your non-static partitions on FUSE or whatever, do note that using the Google Drive API writes are eventually consistent and rate limits will corrupt whatever you are writing, unlike what a regular file system needs.
Re:How is this news? (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed, booting from NFS for diskless work stations isn't news.
Re: How is this news? (Score:2)
I recall running diskless Unix workstations in the late 80s and early 90s. Nothing to see here
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Same here.
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Right -- the idea to boot off NFS has been around for a handful of decades. Not years, but *decades*. So not new, not news, except for the Google Drive involvement which makes it vaguely interesting, but ultimately ho-hum.
Then, nearly every desktop I've purchased in the last 20 or so years has had a net boot option built-in to the BIOS in one form or another.
So really, really not news.
Re: (Score:2)
THIS.
People have been running Plex servers via rclone mount (which allows for caching and many other tweaks) from Google Drive since way before the pandemic. Some have in PB range (think more material than all streaming services put together, plus mostly any BD/DVD that was vaguely popular ever). Yes, Google closed the "Gsuite unlimited" loophole but it had a VERY good run.
Speaking of what particular solution is used they're showing in the screen shot mount type as fuse.s3fs and briefly looking at s3fs of c
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed, booting from NFS for diskless work stations isn't news.
Indeed and this news article isn't about a diskless boot. It's about mounting your root partition on Google drive using FUSE.
Re: How is this news? (Score:1)
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The user isn't just loading an image to get the computer to boot from a HTTPS connection. The story here is they are mounting their root partition directly from Google-drive via FUSE and they ran into a lot of difficulties on the way due to simlinks and hardlinks.
We need a new rule on the internet: Rule 137: Every time guruevi posts something dismissively as "not news" it's because he didn't bother to read or understand what is going on.
Re: How is this news? (Score:1)
Again, this isnâ(TM)t exactly new. People have been doing this for a while. The issue with symlinks and hardlinks has been solved for a long time for various file systems by basically emulating them in another FUSE layer.
There is a 7 year old post on how to use S3 for root partitions.
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There is a 7 year old post on how to use S3 for root partitions.
I just looked it up. Turns out S3 is not Google Drive. I am as surprised as you by this.
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But S3FS is FUSE. Tomorrow I can make the same dumb article how I did it on Dropbox, or over SFTP etc.
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Indeed. As long as you can load the kernel and optionally an initrd, and the kernel then can access some type of filesystem it can deal with, this is possible. Linux is _very_ tolerant in that way. Obviously, such a thing would never work with Windows, but when comparing a state-of-the-art system to the "village idiot" of operating systems, you get effects like that.
On gmail (Score:5, Interesting)
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I suspect performance was far better than for the folks that actually implemented RFC 1149 . . .
Strange way to put it... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, basically, they are not "running Linux on Google Drive", but, rather, using Google Driver as a network boot server. Why call it "run on GD"?
*looking at the line below the headline*
Oh, I see.
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It's not even that. Kernel and initramfs are local, then root is mounted from gdrive.
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My bad, TFS says "one-upped an NFS boot", so I assumed...
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If there's anything experience tells me (Score:4, Informative)
If there is anything I know about technology, it's that moving everything to The Cloud is the current trend.
Then you don't know much about technology.
The cloud is stifling and dangerous, putting control of your computer needs in the hands of someone else who then has a gun to your head, makes your entire business dependent on the internet cord, and is insanely resource-intensive.
We older folks remember when the personal computer came about and we finally were finally free of the sumbitches controlling access to mainframes like little dictators and grossly overcharging everybody for it. History will repeat itself and people will once again yearn to be free of the modern BOFH. One day people will realize the folly of the cloud at the first large-enough breakdown of the internet, or when big data overdoes the vendor lock-in and monetization of their private data.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Seems you're the one that doesn't know much about tech. Everything is moving to the cloud except for bit players.
For a business, the services and data are to be used over the internet, a large breakdown of the internet means business is cut off anyway. What's more fragile, a cloud vendors multiple ISP or your 3 bit subnet business comcast or whatever to your house or mom and pop shop?
You're talking like a small time operator. Cloud can give redundancy, backups and archive and in multiple locations. You
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Everything old is new again. Sun was ahead of their time.
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they made workstations and we all have those now. They also made some servers but that flopped and even Oracle that bought them out, and Fujistsu that made the bigger servers are all getting out of that business.
Instead for servers Oracle is in the cloud business and that is booming like crazy.
Businesses aren't going to go back to their funding hardware and network and backup at one or three locations. It's too damn expensive and staff heavy.
There are many ways businesses can have copies of their data sen
Re:If there's anything experience tells me (Score:5, Interesting)
Because you think the cloud is just about serving webpages to your customers and backing stuff up eh?
Have you tried using SolidWorks when the internet is down? We tried the other day: we had an internet outage because of roadwork outside the building and the construction crew cut the cable. All 8 employees doing CAD modeling went home, because the fucking cloud SaaS garbage didn't work no more.
That's the cloud.
Without the cloud, 8 employees would have had a productive day.
Re: If there's anything experience tells me (Score:2)
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Itâ(TM)s called redundancy aka Starlink.
That's a funny way to write "local software that doesn't require multiple internet subscriptions to work reliably."
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Just think if construction crew cut your power by accident, that happens too. Guess you need your own nuclear reactor or wind farm with telsa storage packs eh?
Or your water line could be cut and your toilets full of stinky smelly nastiness. Guess you need to drill a well and get enough maggots to eat feces and hmm, what drinks urine? A Watersports porn subsidiary?
Cause you can't depend on the water and electricity cloud!
Your argument against the cloud really doesn't have merit.
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None of what you said invalidates the comment. Just because your assessment of something being stifling and dangerous doesn't mean it isn't a current trend.
The current trend in Europe is to try and smuggling fireworks into stadiums. Being a stupid idea doesn't make it any less of a trend.
Headline failure but a fun diversion (Score:5, Informative)
Had to read that headline three times and even then it made no sense until I read the summary. Can you change it to read something more like Boots Linux using Google Drive as the root file system, or Boots up Linux from Google Drive or something?
Anyway, Linux has always had the ability to boot off a network and use a variety of file systems. Distro net installer images were my primary way of installing Linux for a long time. DHCP, tftp, and installer pulled down from the web.
The initial ramdisk has always been the primary tool to make booting off the network happen. I was booting RedHat Linux 6.2 on a little Sparc terminal workstation (wish I could remember what it was called) with nothing but dhcp, tftp and an nfs root decades ago. Still remember how crisp that monochrome screen was. In fact I found a bug in GTK when X was using 1bpp that actually got fixed.
Fun that the young people are re-exploring this old territory.
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The fun starts when you have a boot rom [ipxe.org] which can download kernels from web servers, or chainload a capable boot rom from the ubiquitous PXE boot rom.
Google File Stream API (Score:2)
If this was using the Google Drive File stream API, which permits sub-atomic updates, it would be very news worthy, but AFAIK the API used by the Google Drive for Desktop app isn't published. This appears just to use the vanilla object store like S3 (all or nothing).
iPXE? (Score:2)
So I don't quite see why this is sooo special?
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Wait until they discover dumb terminals next.
ISO on Google Drive. (Score:2)
I really need to give this a go. I have booted an ISO with GRUB before, this should be a fun weekend project.
Booting from NFS (Score:2)
While it was not completely normal, "root on nfs" has been a standard option to Linux kernels forever (https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/nfsroot.txt) and was quite important when disk space was more expensive.
So your giving your passwords to google (Score:4, Interesting)
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way back when (Score:2)
now get off my lawn!
robustness of Linux (Score:2)
Reinventing thin clients! (Score:2)
How is this anything but a bad reinvention of thin clients or PXE-boot, except ridiculously slower and prone to failure due to Google Drive's largely asynchronous nature?
Some of us have been using PXE or other Net-boot style systems for decades to "fix" this "problem", and there's nothing preventing you from having a router establish a VPN tunnel to your cloud environment and leveraging NFS from there if you just have to be in the cloud for this, and it will perform a hell of a lot better.
Here I thought the trend was... (Score:2)
...currently moving away form the cloud. Since, you know, the cloud is just someone else's computer.