Subject: Re: [vserver] vserver git server and misc. thoughts
From: Martin Fick <mogulguy@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:48:49 -0700 (PDT)

--- On Tue, 8/12/08, Ed W <lists@wildgooses.com> wrote:

> So does anyone have enough interest and capacity to try and
> take some small bits of the vserver project and push it upstream? 
> Are there any reasonably uncontroversial bits to get some momentum?


Vservers are cool, they provided lots of very nice features and are light weight to
boot.  However, I personally only use the simplest features of veservers.  I want and
use simple (primarily namespace) isolation and do not (yet) use any of the more advanced
features such as cpu/memory limits...  I suspect that I am not the only one in this
boat.  I like the simplicity of most of the management features but do not care as much
about underlying implementations.  I want a new vserver, I simply give it a name and
an IP, done.  Great tools, thanks!

I suspect that much of what it takes to support my mode of operation is already well
available in the mainline kernel:
http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1410000/1400109/p104-bhattiprolu.pdf?key1=1400109&key2=3909558121&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=40226051&CFTOKEN=79653329
If that is indeed true, then would perhaps a separate approach not be porting vserver
utilities to these new kernel features?  How far would this approach go, and would it
be enough for most of the basic namespace isolation.  While this may conflict with the
goal of getting advanced vserver functionality into mainline, it may be what many people
are actually looking for?  Could basic vserver support be implemented currently by simply
patching the utilities to use new system calls?  If not, what about identifying the
important features to merge to mainline with this objective in mind?


-Martin