Aleph ℵ GNU/Linux distribution version <a href="version.txt">0.2.10</a>
:
<ol>
  <li><a href="distribution_content/aleph.krnl">kernel</a></li>
  <li><a href="distribution_content/aleph.ird">init ram disk</a></li>
  <li><a href="distribution_content/aleph.sfs">squash file system</a></li>
  <li><a href="distribution_content/aleph.iso">live ISO</a></li>
</ol>

<hr/>

Aleph GNU/Linux is a <a href="https://www.debian.org/" target="_blank">Debian
</a> based distribution, inspired from the container analogy, aiming to reduce
the time needed to make a hardware usable, by removing the need to install an
Operating System, to configure it, or even deploy software to it. Aleph brings
up your system, with pre-installed and pre-configured software that runs in a
volatile environment(RAM) - persistent storage(HDD) is not even needed.

<hr/>

Boot the OS, using
<a href="https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=PXELINUX"
  target="_blank">PXELINUX</a>:
<pre>
label aleph
  kernel http://192.168.10.2/aleph.krnl
  append initrd=http://192.168.10.2/aleph.ird ip=:::::enp0s8:dhcp console=ttyS0 console=tty0 boot=pxe maxTryCount=10 config_srv_url=http://192.168.10.2/aleph_config rooturl=http://192.168.10.2/aleph.sfs
</pre>

The kernel(<8MiB) and the "init ram disk"(IRD)(<45MiB) is loaded. IRD brings up
the network - see kernel `ip` parameter for network configuration. Then IRD
loads the URL: <a href="./ird_net" target="_blank">${config_srv_url}/ird_net</a>
as a script responsible for downloading and mounting the "actual" file system,
which is a "squash file system" (SFS) of varying sizes. Once this is mounted,
PID 1 is started from /sbin/init . Once the system booted from our SFS, a
subsequent script is loaded from URL: ${config_srv_url}/boot which is
responsible for further configuring the system, on top of what the SFS provides.

<hr/>

If you like containers, you can think of the machine/node as being the
container, and the SFS as being the "container image" that comes with an
(actual) operating system environment, configuration, libraries/dependencies and
the software/server that you want to run. The "boot" URL/script is the
equivalent of an entrypoint to make small tweaks to the system. You can also
create new SFS images/files by expanding them, or starting from scratch.

<hr/>

<font size=99>ℵ</font> - Borrowed from mathematics (set theory), the
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_number" target="_blank">aleph
numbers</a> are a sequence of numbers used to represent the cardinality (or
size) of infinite sets. They were introduced by the mathematician Georg Cantor,
and are named after the symbol he used to denote them: the first letter of the
Hebrew alphabet: Aleph ( ℵ ). Georg Cantor defined the notion of cardinality and
realized that infinite sets can have different cardinalities. The smallest
cardinality of an infinite set is that of the natural numbers, denoted by
ℵ<sub>0</sub> (read aleph-zero).

<hr/>

Author: Tancredi-Paul Grozav - paul@grozav.info