Embedded Developer

How an old Kubuntu desktop became an encrypted Ubuntu Server 26.04.1 with nothing but SSH: GRUB starts the network installer, autoinstall answers every question, and an SSH server inside the boot environment takes the disk passphrase. Warning. This wipes the whole disk of the machine. One wrong file and the server is a brick until someone brings a screen. Test the exact install file in a virtual machine first (step 6), keep a copy of everything you need from the old system, and have a screen and keyboard within reach the first time. The machine ASUS PRIME B550M-A, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, RTX 3060, NVMe SSD Before: Kubuntu 22.04 (a desktop install, used as a server) After: Ubuntu Server 26.04.1 LTS on a LUKS-encrypted disk Headless: no monitor or keyboard, reached only over SSH The BIOS had just been updated from Linux the same way (see the previous post ) The work was done remotely over SSH with the help of an AI assistant (Claude, by Anthropic), which wrote the install file,...

Our lab network runs on an old but solid ZyXEL NBG6817 (Armor Z2) with OpenWrt. It had been running OpenWrt 22.03.5 for years without anyone touching it. 22.03 has been end-of-life for a long time, so it no longer gets security fixes. Time to clean it up. This time I tried something new: almost all of the work was done by AI agents. Claude (Anthropic's coding agent, running in a Docker sandbox on my PC) did the inspection, built the firmware and ran the upgrade. A second model, Fable , reviewed the plan independently before anything touched the router. My job was to make decisions and be the hands when something physical was needed. Step 1: Is the router compromised? Before upgrading anything, we checked whether the old router had been tampered with. If it had, a backup of its configuration would carry the problem over to the new firmware. The check covered: running processes and open ports cron jobs, startup scripts and files changed outside the firmware image ...

How a headless Ryzen server went from a 2021 BIOS to the newest one over SSH, using fwupd and the board's own UEFI capsule support, and the two prompts that still needed a screen. Warning. ASUS does not support this way of updating. It worked on my board; it is not guaranteed to work on yours. A failed or interrupted BIOS flash can leave a board unable to start. Do it only if you accept that risk, never cut the power while it flashes, and have a screen and keyboard within reach. The machine ASUS PRIME B550M-A, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, 4 memory sticks (mixed kits), RTX 3060 Kubuntu 22.04 with fwupd 1.7.9 Headless: no monitor or keyboard, reached only over SSH BIOS 2423 from August 2021 The work was done remotely over SSH with the help of an AI assistant (Claude, by Anthropic, Opus 5.5), which ran and checked every step below. Why update at all The old BIOS was four years behind. ASUS's own release notes for this board list, between 2423 and the newest version: sever...