fzakaria/selfdb

selfdb

SELF — the Structured Executable & Linkable Format: a program that is a SQLite database instead of an ELF file, and the machinery to actually run it on Linux/NixOS.

sqlelf (arXiv:2405.03883) put a SQL view over ELF. This project inverts it: the rows are the format, a binfmt_misc interpreter executes them, and nixpkgs/NixOS is the vehicle to run a real slice of a system on it.

$ file hello
hello: SQLite 3.x database, application id 0x53454c46, user version 1
$ ./hello
Hello, world!
$ sqlite3 hello 'SELECT soname FROM ldd'          # ldd, as a query
$ sqlite3 hello 'DELETE FROM sections; VACUUM'    # strip, as a transaction
$ ./hello                                         # still runs
Hello, world!

What's here

• converter/ — elf2self, self2elf, and the self CLI (Python + LIEF).
• loader/ — self-exec, the binfmt interpreter, with three modes: memfd (rebuild ELF → ), (map segments + hand off to ld.so), (be the dynamic linker, bind via SQL). Plus , an library that makes load shared libraries resolved through SQL.