Linux is an interpreter
astrid.tech
astrid.tech
Just because something looks similar doesn't mean it's equivalent. Binary programs are executed on the CPU, so if there's an interpreter involed it's hiding in the hardware environment. That's outside the scope of an OS kernel.
If you have a shell script in your filesystem and run it, you need to also provide the shell that interprets the script. Author omits this detail and confuses the kernel with the shell program.
Linux can easily be compiled without support for initramfs and ramdisk. It can still boot and run whatever userland sits in the filesystem.
"Linux initrd interpreter" hurts my brain. That's not how it works.
Edit: should've read further. Still a backwards way of explaining things imho.
its not a phd paper so thats fine!
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?
its not as simple as executable file, blap now it runs. they made it like that on the surface so people dont need to bother with the details.
a lot in this article, writes about the abstractions and maybe how they work. not really sure as you i found it hard to read. It doesnt mean its all wrong though, maybe theres more ways to look at a system which has layered abstractions. Each layer can be a different view and be discussed independently in its design.
if you look at what the CPU and kernel code is doing its a messy afair :D hard to talk about (fun tho :D and imho good to understand as you pointed out)
an elf file is not executable, but depending on what you do, a linker and loader might cause the operating system to execute some or all of its contents at some point.
It passes it off to the hardware (CPU) which runs the instructions.
See also: Jazelle DBX.
Hell, on modern x86 processors, many “native” instructions are actually a series of micro-ops for a mostly undocumented and mostly poorly understood microcode architecture that differs from the natively documented instruction set.
It’s turtles all the way down.
I don’t know how I feel about micro-ops being executed in hardware - I mostly agree, but also, microcode updates exist…
https://github.com/google/security-research/blob/master/pocs...
Tavis spells it out there pretty quickly:
“ The simplest instructions (add, sub, mov, etc) are all implemented in hardware. The more complicated instructions like rdrand, fpatan and cmpxchg are microcoded. You can think of them as a bit like calling into a library of functions written in that RISC-like code.”
"Okay, so the reason I initially did this was because I didn’t want to pay Contabo an extra $1.50/mo to have object storage just to be able to spawn VPSes from premade disk images."
I think there's a sweetspot between " I spent 50 hours to save 1.50$/mo" and "every engineer should be spending 250K$/mo in tokens".
Host employees still need to eat, if we can't afford 1.50$/mo, then we aren't really professionals and are just coasting on real infrastructure subsidized by professionals that pay for the pay-as-you-go infrastructure.
It's still possible to go even further to these extremes, there's thousands of developers that just coast by on github pages and vercel subdomains. So at least having a VPS puts you ahead of that mass competitively, but trying to save 1.50$/mo is a harsh place to be. At that point I don't think that the technical skills are the bottleneck, it's more likely that there's some social work that needs to be done, and that obsessing over running doom on curl is not a very productive use of one's time in a critical economic spot.
I write this because I am in that spot, but perhaps I'm reading a bit much into it.
Really in the spirit of "hacker" news IMO.
I get the motivation, it's less avoiding the 1.50 per month and more like a challenge to work around it!
It can be a problem but it can be also just a human following their special interests that give them joy.
For me as a ADHD person engaging with my special interests is a hard requirement to keep my mental health in check and therefore a very good use of my time.
The cost for 1 hour of cloud CPU time is the same (barring discounts), no matter who you are. THe cost for 1 hour of engineer time varies wildly. If you're a non-profit or a solo dev, you may even consider that cost to be "free."
If your engineer costs are far lower than what AWS assumes they are, going with AWS is a stupid decision, you're far better off using VPSes / dedicated servers and self-hosting all the services you need to run on top.
This is a strange claim.
Whether someone is getting paid or not to do something is what determines who is a professional, not whether or how much they're paying someone else. (And that's the only thing that matters, unlike the way that "professional" is used as a euphemism in Americans' bizarre discursive repertoire.)
To put an example, suppose you hire a painter, and they show up with non-work attire, no ladder, no brush, they ask you to buy a can of paint for them and a brush. Compared to a contractor that bills you flat and brins their own ladder, has work clothing and shoes, an air pneumatic spray painter, a breathing mask. Who is more professional?
It's part of a broader debate for sure, OP seems to have done it more for the experience than to actually save 1.50$.
I think hacks like these have a positive effect on the industry. It pushes back on meaningless, encroaching monetization and encourages Conatbo to reevaluate their service offerings to ensure they justify the price.
> To put an example, suppose you hire a painter, and they show up with non-work attire, no ladder, no brush, they ask you to buy a can of paint for them and a brush. Compared to a contractor that bills you flat and brins their own ladder, has work clothing and shoes, an air pneumatic spray painter, a breathing mask. Who is more professional?
Literally meaningless. Are both getting paid? Yes? Then they are both professionals.
You can insist on using "professional" in a strained way to try to facilitate some attempt at being judgmental and gatekeepy, but "professional" means what it means. If you mean something else, then say what you mean and leave out the euphemisms.
For example the phrase "unprofessional professional" means a professional (ie getting paid) who is behaving unprofessionally (ie exhibiting a lack of professionalism).
> the phrase "unprofessional professional" means
That's just an oxymoron.
> a professional (ie getting paid) who is behaving unprofessionally (ie exhibiting a lack of professionalism)
A professional who is getting paid, the (only) necessary and sufficient condition for being "professional", is by definition exhibiting professionalism. That's a fact, and it's not any more complicated than that.
I'm not hiring that plumber again as he was rather unprofessional.
Your attire doesn't look professional.
> ... is by definition exhibiting professionalism.
Nope, wrong again.
I found the lack of professionalism during my recent visit alarming.
adj sense 1c
>characterized by or conforming to the technical or ethical standards of a profession
>"did a competent, professional job"
>exhibiting a courteous, conscientious, and generally businesslike manner in the workplace professional behavior/attire
>"I thought the whole meeting was going to fall apart but you rescued it like a true professional!"
As you can see there's more than 1 sense for the word, I didn't just make it up, it's a well established use of the word.
The definition you refer to is the 2nd sense:
>a: participating for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of endeavor often engaged in by amateurs
> "a professional golfer/poker player"
>"Few think of Idaho as fertile ground for developing professional baseball players."
>b: having a particular profession as a permanent career
>"a professional soldier"
>c: engaged in by persons receiving financial return
> "plays professional football/sports/poker"
> I thought it was a neat trick, a funny shitpost that riffs on the eternal curl | sh debate. I could write a blog post about it, I tell you about how you can do it yourself, one thousand words, I learn something, you learn something, I get internet points, win win.
The only area I think Windows may be better is the graphical user interface. Now, the windows interface annoys me to no ends, but GNOME annoys me and KDE annoys me too. I have been more using fluxbox or icewm, sometimes when I feel fancy xfce or mate-desktop, but by and large I think my "hardcore desktop days" are over. I want things to be fast and efficient and simple. Most of the work I do I handle via the commandline and a bit of web-browsing and writing code/text in an editor, for the most part (say, 95% of the activities).
Nah. You're right about Gnome and KDE, but Windows is even worse because you can't exactly escape away from microsoft's insane labyrinth or awful wm. Frankly, not a fan of the Xerox bloodline of desktop interfaces in general. mpx/mux heritage is the one I like. 9wm, cwm or dwm. Closer to Engelbart and just generally all around better.
Sway + foot with keybinds to provision each workspace to your liking is pretty nice. No desktop, but really flies for your use case (mine also). Bind window focus to your most comfortable keys.
... (in which case no command-line options to the dynamic linker can be passed and, in the ELF case, the dynamic linker which is stored in the .interp section of the program is executed)
note how the ELF section is named.