How to get super small linuxboot images and still have everything you need with the 'cpu' command

Do you want to have all the tools on your linuxboot system that you have on your desktop, but you can't get them to fit in your tiny flash part? Do you want all your desktop files visible on your linuxboot system, but just remembered there's no disk on your linuxboot system? Are you tired of using scp or wget to move files around? Do you want to run emacs or vim on the linuxboot machine, but know they can't ever fit? What about zsh? How about being able to run commands on your linuxboot machine and have the output appear on your home file system? You say you'd like to make this all work without having to ask your Sysadmin From Hell to Do Magic to your desktop?

Your search is over: cpu is here to answer all your usability needs.

CPU is a go implementation of Plan 9's cpu command. It uses the go ssh package, so all your communications are as secure as ssh. It can be started from /sbin/init or even replace /sbin/init, so you have teeny tiny flash footprint. You can see the code at github.com:u-root/cpu. It's also small: less than 20 files, including tests.

CPU runs as both a client (on your desktop) and an ssh server (on your linuxboot machine). On your desktop, it needs no special privilege. On the linuxboot system, it needs only fusermount. On the remote machine, it mounts a FUSE server into a process private name space at important places like /home/$USER, /bin, and so on. It implements remote file access by relaying FUSE requests via gorpc to a server embedded in the cpu command. The desktop command services those requests; you don't need to run a special external server.

CPU will change your life. You can forget about moving files via scp: once you 'cpu in', the /home directory on your linuxboot node is your home directory. You can cd ~ and see all your files. You can pick any shell you want, since the shell binary comes from your desktop, not flash. You don't have to worry about fitting zsh into flash ever again!