linux-kernel - Re: [uml-devel] [RFC] UML kernel & rootfs bundle with every kernel release ?

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Date:	Tue, 03 Apr 2007 18:53:52 +0100
From:	Antoine Martin <antoine@...afix.co.uk>
To:	Blaisorblade <blaisorblade@...oo.it>
CC:	Jeff Dike <jdike@...toit.com>, devzero@....de,
	user-mode-linux-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [uml-devel] [RFC] UML kernel & rootfs bundle with every kernel
 release ?

Blaisorblade wrote:
> On lunedì 2 aprile 2007, Antoine Martin wrote:
>> Jeff Dike wrote:
>>> On Sun, Apr 01, 2007 at 08:58:45PM +0100, Antoine Martin wrote:
>>>> I reckon that one critical thing which could drastically increase the
>>>> user base would be to have a working virtual framebuffer implementation.
>>> Why?  I've never understood what a framebuffer gives you that you
>>> don't have now.
>> Just like the network auto-configuration via dhcp,
> Hmm... for that to be completely plug-and-play you need to make sure a dhcp 
> server on the host exists.
> 
> Vmware runs a separate DHCP server exactly for this, even if we should avoid 
> that as much as possible.
It is trivial to write a shell script that takes care of setting up the 
interface and checks for the presence of a dhcp server. (the dhcpd.conf 
can be generated easily)

The problem lies with the configuration options, I have got a bunch of 
shell scripts to take care of that, but it is quite hard to make them 
suitable for global consumption by the average user:
* even with just tap networking, I use 4 different ways of hooking them 
up the outside world
* firewalling and mac address filtering
* bridging issues and ebtables
* tmpfs and memory issues
* selinux and chrooting issues...
etc...

[snip]
> although it stopped working for me ages ago (probably for some UML bug). I 
> built a Mandrake image (that I now lost) with Xnest configured. With a script 
> on the host which passes the host IP and that calls xhost, it should work 
> easily. And btw, we need a standard startup script anyway.
It would work, but it's not a pretty solution, it requires 
customizations to the guest and it would not be intuitive to new users.
I would much prefer the ability to just run any distro (even framebuffer 
based ones) without modifications using the virtual framebuffer.

>> It would also make it a lot easier to focus on writing a management UI,
>> hell if there isn't one shortly after, I'll do one myself!
> 
> Why not one management UI running from the host, a-la vmware?
Yes ,that was what I had in mind.
> Possibly, with 
> as much code as possible in scripting languages, for better transparency.
Definitely, (see above)

The management tools I have written export the guests' settings to the 
filesystem in the form of a shell script file, all the utility scripts 
just read those settings and do their stuff. (all in simple shell)
Antoine


>> Think of a UML browser image (running IE via wine in a limited image
>> with just X + wine + IE - I would much prefer that to having wine+IE
>> installed locally), testing framebuffer apps like gtk-fb/cairo-fb
>> without risking your dev environment, etc...
>>
>> Antoine
> 
> 
> 

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