This is a detective-style game to learn about inodes, links and filesystems in Linux. This game has multiple levels, and the user wins when they shutdown their computer from within the same terminal window.
You suddenly wake up and find yourself in a weird environment. You follow crumb trails and find a bunch of weird folders, the levels.
Inside, you will be greeted by hints left by previous users who couldn't make it. Will you be the one who succeeds ? You win this game if you are able to shutdown your pc from within the same terminal where you launched the game. Seems simple right 👀 ?
To set your environment, you can either clone the repository :
git clone https://github.com/Tuasco/CTSthen cd into the repository's directory and execute start.sh :
cd CTS
sudo bash start.shRemoving the new directory created by git isn't enough to get rid of the game from your computer.
After you're done (whether successfully or not), you should restart your computer (or not if you already shut it down), then execute the stop.sh script to clean up any remaining files, mounts and other system changes :
sudo bash stop.sh
⚠️ If you have a Live CD: Restarting your computer is sufficient
❗ If you haven't played the game yet: The following parts contain spoilers ! Please proceed with playing the game and only refer to the following sections if you have a (very) hard time figuring the game out.
The user has to execute the start.sh script. Then, they will have to do some reading to understand the basics about inodes. This level strictly sets the user and the computer up to be ready to attempt the challenge.
A file lists basically every way yuo could shutdown your computer. This game seems soooo easy !
In this level, the user has to see the inode number of specific files and folders and give the correct number to a verification script. Simple stuff to get familiar with the concept.
A file left by a previous user tells us that the inode number of the root directory should be a power of 2. What is ours ? Weird...
To pass the level, the user has to resolve an issue that make files linked (writing in one results in the other being modified) and find out that files can share a single inode (hardlinks).
A note says that we're imprisoned. WHAT ?
Here the user has to navigate a symlink path and fix a symlink loop at the end of it, that makes a file non accessible by the symlinks because of a configuration error.
A python script. Interesting... But what does it do ?
Hang on a second ! We can't shutdown, the root inode number isn't 2, we have one more link to it that what we can count, someone said we're in prison. That's right ! A chroot jail ! What about that python script ? The user wins if he can use the script to break out of the jail and shutdown his PC.
If you choose not to pass a level the regular way, you can always bypass it (cheater).
You need to write 1 in a file named .PASS in the same directory as the level you chose to override.