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diff --git a/src/routes/blog/posts/alpine-ssh-early-initfs.svx b/src/routes/blog/posts/alpine-ssh-early-initfs.svx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a9296b7 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/routes/blog/posts/alpine-ssh-early-initfs.svx @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +title: "Launching SSH during early boot with mkinitfs" +blurb: "Replacing the early init with our own script to launch SSH, killing it in early userspace, and allowing remote disk decryption in the mean time" +author: "7222e800" +slug: "alpine-ssh-early-initfs-disk-decryption" +id: 1768406136 + +# Timestamps are in ISO8601 UTC (`date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ`) +created: "2026-01-14T15:53:57Z" +updated: "2026-01-14T15:53:57Z" +published: false +--- + +For a while, this one's been meaning to setup an early-boot SSH environment for +Alpine Linux on systems that are using a +[System Disk](https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/System_Disk_Mode) installation +mode. + +<!-- TODO: APKOVL boot article --> +In [Data Disk](https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Data_Disk_Mode) mode, it can +be handled in `boot` or `sysinit`. This can even be nicely netbooted via a +netbooted apkovl - article on that eventually. (for now, if you're interested +in that, here's a good starting point: +[alpine/mkinitfs#cc4954b/initramfs-init.in](https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/mkinitfs/-/blob/cc4954bc73cf55833b48624232b9c42ca3abc390/initramfs-init.in#L647)) + +On System Disk installations, with tooling like [dracut](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dracut), +this would also be trivial. Unfortunately, this one's a masochist and like +staying close to the intended upstream Alpine installation + +> **Note**<br/> +> Alpine does have +> [a package](https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/package/v3.23/community/x86_64/dracut) +> for dracut, and the reader may want to look into using it instead. + +## mkinitfs and it's challenges + +Alpine's [mkinitfs](https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/mkinitfs/) allows us +to do things like including files or kernel modules in the image, via their +[features.d](https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/mkinitfs/-/tree/master/features.d). +This is nice and all, but on it's own, we can only really give the kernel a +module, or a file we manually call by spamming enter through the encryption +password prompts and running via the 'Emergency Shell'. |