♫ netcat - Cycles Per Instruction
by Brandon Lucia, Andrew Olmstead, and David Balatero
Released April 2014
Cycles Per Instruction - The Kernel Module Edition
Welcome to the most unnecessarily complicated netcat album release format yet.
In this repository, you will be able to compile your own kernel module, create a
/dev/netcat device and redirect its output into an audio player.
ogg123 - < /dev/netcat
This repository contains the album's track data in source files, that (for complexity's sake) came from .ogg files that were
encoded from .wav files that were created from .mp3 files that were encoded from the mastered
.wav files which were generated from ProTools final mix .wav files that were created from
24-track analog tape.
If complexity isn't your thing, you can go to our webpage and follow the links to a digital download or a cassette tape of our album.
Building
We've only tested this on Ubuntu Linux. Sure, it's real easy to grab another operating system ISO and test it out, but after a day toiling in the bitmines, who has the energy?
Other people report:
- @NicolasCARPi says it works on Arch 64-bit / kernel 3.14.1-1-ARCH. You heard it here first!
- Intrepid explorer @jfilip feels good about his 64-bit Fedora 20 install
First, install some dependencies:
sudo apt-get install build-essential vorbis-tools linux-headers-$(uname -r)
Check out the repo:
git clone https://github.com/usrbinnc/netcat-cpi-kernel-module.git
cd netcat-cpi-kernel-module
Next, build the module by running:
make
Building will take a long time. Hang with it. Building also requires several gigabytes of memory. We're not totally sure why, but we think it is because because the compiler is making lots of copies of several large, static arrays that contain track data.
Listening
After you build, run you need to load the module and see if it is working, so you can run:
sudo insmod netcat.ko
dmesg
You should see output like the following from dmesg:
[ 2606.528153] [netcat]: netcat - Cycles Per Instruction - Kernel Module Edition - 2014
[ 2606.528153] [netcat]: netcat is Brandon Lucia, Andrew Olmstead, and David Balatero
[ 2606.528153] [netcat]: 'ogg123 - < /dev/netcat' to play.
Finally, put on some headphones, and run:
ogg123 - < /dev/netcat
Track information will show up in the output of dmesg:
[ 612.411529] [netcat]: Now playing track 2 - The Internet is an Apt Motherfucker
If you've read this far, god help us all.
People insane enough to contribute (thanks!!)
- @mark-bi added support for auto-creating our /dev/netcat device. Thanks, Mark!
- @arfar pointed out that not everyone wants to clone public repos over SSH, and updated the clone instructions to https. Thanks!
- @jmtd simplified the command to play audio by removing the extra instance of cat. Thanks!