Can you remotely unlock an encrypted hard disk? [Jyn] needed to unlock their home server after it rebooted even if they weren’t home. Normally, they used Tailscale to remote in, but you can’t use tailscale to connect to the machine before the hard drive decrypts, right? Well, you can, sort of, and [Jyn] explains how.The entertaining post points out something you probably knew, but never thought much about. When your Linux box boots, it starts a very tiny compressed Linux in RAM. On [Jyn’s] machine using Arch, this is the initramfs.That’s not news, but because it is an actual limited Linux system (including systemd), you can add tools to it. In this case, adding dropbear (an ssh server) and Tailscale to the limited boot-time Linux.Doing this in the most straightforward way presents several issues related to security. However, using a few configuration items, you can limit it to showing the unlock screen and nothing else.The only limitation is that the setup, as written, will only work with an Ethernet interface. WiFi should be possible, but getting the wireless network up in this environment would likely be challenging.You could probably set this up with WireGuard or even an ssh tunnel if you were adventurous.