[astralbijection]

> An archive of files and directories is in itself not a program.

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?

[tosti]

By that logic, everything is executable. Not entirely wrong, but mostly because of vulnerabilities. Not because of a highly contrived way of using a file format to run a program. You could do the same thing with json or xml.

[saidnooneever]

i agree, its linkers and loaders which parse a file and extract meaning, which might be executed by yet another program that runs in kernel and creates a 'user space' part to run the untrusted code in.

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)

[saidnooneever]

ELF files are an image format which is a format to store things in basically..image being a legacy term.

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.