Booting Linux off of Google Drive
Quoting: Booting Linux off of Google Drive | Ersei 'n Stuff —
Competitiveness is a vice of mine. When I heard that a friend got Linux to boot off of NFS, I had to one-up her. I had to prove that I could create something harder, something better, faster, stronger.
Like all good projects, this began with an Idea.
My mind reached out and grabbed wispy tendrils from the æther, forcing the disparate concepts to coalesce. The Mass gained weight in my hands, and a dark, swirling colour promising doom to those who gazed into it for long.
On the brink of insanity, my tattered mind unable to comprehend the twisted interplay of millennia of arcane programmer-time and the ragged screech of madness, I reached into the Mass and steeled myself to the ground lest I be pulled in, and found my magnum opus.
Booting Linux off of a Google Drive root.
Also:
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Linux Distro Can Run on Google Drive: This Developer Made it Happen
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.
Yes, you read that right, I was also surprised when I first came across it thanks to TechSpot. Let us take a look.
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A developer somehow got an entire OS running on Google Drive | TechSpot
"Competitiveness is a vice of mine. When I heard that a friend got Linux to boot off of NFS, I had to one-up her," Ersei explains. "I had to prove that I could create something harder, something better, faster, stronger."
Most people would assume that's just not possible – after all, Google Drive is built for storing and sharing files, not loading entire operating systems. But they disagreed. Armed with some solid Linux development experience, Ersei set out to make the plan a reality. The method was to create a FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) RAM disk that could load all the essential OS components, apps, and networking binaries directly from Google Drive during the Linux boot process.
Sounds simple in theory, but the reality was far from it. The dev had to handle EFI images, pivot_root, and even inexplicable errors caused by Google Drive's symlinks. But they tweaked and adjusted their way through it all.
XDA Developers:
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You can apparently run an entire OS in Google Drive, but you definitely shouldn't
We've all heard of the weird and wacky ways that people get software to run in places that it absolutely shouldn't. Projects that developers undertake like running DOOM on a Tesla, the ones that are fun but are mostly impractical in the real world. One developer has taken things a step further, managing to boot Arch Linux directly from Google Drive on an old laptop with no storage, in what can be seen as either a groundbreaking achievement or a bizarre experiment.
Firstly, to understand the complexity of this task, undertaken by a developer called Ersei, it's important to grasp the Linux boot process...
NewsBytes:
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Who needs hard drive? Student runs Linux from Google Drive
In a significant accomplishment, Ersei, a computer science student at Purdue University, US, has successfully booted Linux directly from Google Drive.
TechRadar:
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Student rediscovers thin client concept, booting Linux from Google Drive — a great proof of concept but one that has very limited use in the real world
A computer science student at Purdue University has managed to boot Linux using Google Drive. This project began as a fun challenge to match a peer’s success in booting Linux from NFS (Network File System), but evolved into an intricate and somewhat impractical experiment.
Ersei, who is also an open source developer, wanted to boot Linux directly from Google's cloud storage platform without depending on another computer for support. To do this, they used FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) to create a filesystem driver within the user space, laying the technical foundation for the project.
Understanding the Linux boot process was crucial. Essentially the way it works is the firmware (BIOS/UEFI) loads a bootloader, which then starts the kernel. The kernel opens a temporary filesystem in RAM, mounts the actual filesystem, and hands over control to the init system. Ersei’s task was to integrate a FUSE filesystem at this point in the process.
Notebookcheck:
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YouTuber explores how booting Linux from Google Drive could spark changes in PC ownership
It actually is possible to cloud-boot an operating system by using Google Drive. The proof of concept comes from a recently published blog post on “Ersei ‘n Stuff” that details the journey and process of booting Arch Linux, a lightweight version of Linux, directly from Google Drive. However, Mental Outlaw points out that this process deviates from a traditional boot sequence more than just booting from Google Drive. He explains that the laptop used in the boot process uses locally stored Linux kernel initramfs to run FUSE. FUSE is used to mount the Linux file system found on Google Drive to complete the “boot” process.
With the process outlined, Mental Outlaw claims this is “a small step in the direction of thin client cloud computers” for the broader tech industry. Thin client devices are devices such as Google Chromebooks or any similar device that relies on cloud computing for most of its processes. Mental Outlaw then expressed that booting your OS from the cloud opens up “both positive and negative” opportunities. One benefit is that your OS will have the same level of protection as data stored in the cloud. Also, if the OS stops working or is compromised, the OS could boot from a previously functional snapshot. Mental Outlaw mentions that the snapshot function can mitigate ransomware attacks and that these systems would be able to leverage cloud-sourced antivirus updates similar to those found in Microsoft Defender.