HOWTOs

Instructions for performing tasks that I do often enough to need to know but infrequently enough to never remember the details.

These commands should all be performed with root permissions. The instructions below assume a destination path of /swapfile and file size of 1 GiB.

First, allocate space:

fallocate -l 1G /swapfile
# alternatively
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=1048576

Ensure only root can read the swap file's contents:

chmod 600 /swapfile

Finally, activate and enable the swap file:

mkswap /swapfile
swapon /swapfile

To have the swap automount on boot, add the following to /etc/fstab:

/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0

Adapted from https://forum.manjaro.org/t/howto-boot-manjaro-iso-directly-with-grub/15892. Run the following commands from the GRUB2 prompt.

set isofile="/path/to/isofile.iso"
set dri="free"
set lang="en_US"
set keytable="us"
set timezone="America/Los_Angeles"
search --no-floppy -f --set=root $isofile
probe -u $root --set=abc
set pqr="/dev/disk/by-uuid/$abc"
loopback loop $isofile
linux (loop)/boot/vmlinuz-x86_64 img_dev=$pqr img_loop=$isofile driver=$dri tz=$timezone lang=$lang keytable=$keytable copytoram
initrd (loop)/boot/intel_ucode.img (loop)/boot/initramfs-x86_64.img

Adjust intel_ucode.img to amd_ucode.img for AMD CPUs.

Note that the GreatFET has Facedancer capabilities, so it should be possible to use it to emulate a mass storage device with the ISO as the source and boot that instead.

This trick works with either a socket or a plug. Connect the following pins:

• 1 ↔ 3
• 2 ↔ 6
• 4 ↔ 7
• 5 ↔ 8

Open a PowerShell window as an administrator, then run the following command to list available disk drives:

GET-CimInstance -query "SELECT * from Win32_DiskDrive"

Locate the desired entry, then attach it to the WSL instance:

wsl --mount \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2

Finally, locate and mount the disk within the WSL instance.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk