Pseudonymous laptop science pupil “Ersei” has created a Linux system that makes use of a Google Drive cloud storage system as its boot system.
“Competitiveness is a vice of mine. After I heard {that a} pal bought Linux as well off of NFS [Network File System], I needed to one-up her,” Ersei explains. “I needed to show that I might create one thing tougher, one thing higher, sooner, stronger. “On the point of madness, my tattered thoughts unable to grasp the twisted interaction of millennia of arcane programmer-time and the ragged screech of insanity, I reached into the Mass and steeled myself to the bottom lest I be pulled in, and located my magnum opus. Booting Linux off of a Google Drive root.”
For those who’ve bought a Linux-capable system with no storage, why not strive booting it from Google Drive? (📷: Ersei)
Google Drive, launched again in 2012, is designed to permit customers to retailer information — each these created on and edited by Google’s productiveness apps together with Google Docs and people made elsewhere. With a claimed person rely of over a billion and trillions of information saved, it is common — however, to one of the best of Ersei’s and our mixed data, has by no means been used as a boot system for an working system.
“I wished this to stay self-contained, so I could not have a second machine act as a ‘helper,'” Ersei explains of the method. “My thoughts went instantly to FUSE [Filesystem in Userspace] — a program that acts as a filesystem driver in userspace (with cooperation from the kernel). I simply needed to get FUSE applications put in within the Linux kernel initramfs and configure networking. How unhealthy might or not it’s?”
The method wasn’t precisely clean crusing, and even in its “completed” state not every part works. (📷: Ersei)
The reply, maybe unsurprisingly, is “fairly unhealthy” — however not not possible. Ersei bought the system, based mostly on the Arch Linux distribution, operating regionally as a proof-of-concept first, then set about porting it to Google Drive. After lots of tinkering, boot was achieved — even utilizing a tool with no storage of its personal. There are, nonetheless, caveats: it is gradual, symbolic and exhausting linking do not work appropriately, and permissions and attributes aren’t recorded.
“Regardless of how foolish this venture is, there are a number of less-silly makes use of I can consider, like booting Linux off of SSH [Secure Shell],” Ersei proposes, “or maybe booting Linux off of a Git repository and monitoring each change in Git utilizing gitfs. The probabilities are countless, regardless of the middling usefulness.”
The total venture write-up is obtainable on Ersei’s weblog.