Subject: Re: [vserver] Roadmap and Future ...
From: Natanael Copa <natanael.copa@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:45:30 +0100

On Thu, 2009-02-26 at 16:30 +0100, Herbert Poetzl wrote:
> I also plan to do a web frontend to control basic
> functionality and a minimalistic host distribution
> to run Linux-VServer Guests on, but I have no idea 
> when I will find time for that.

I might be able to help you with the minimalistic distro part. I already
run a distro, Alpine Linux, that gives you a minimalistic host to run
Linux-VServer Guests on.

Basicly, you run the host from USB mem/CF or cdrom (or a small partition
on HD if you want). My vserver hosts are typcally 40-50MB (excluding
kernel) and run from a tmpfs root so you can replace the boot media (in
case cdrom) for upgrades without turning off the host. It have support
for iSCSI and other nice things.

Currenty it only support the vserver-grsecurity kernel but if someone is
willing to maintain a vanilla+vserver kernel I would be happy to include
that in alpine and might be the default kernel for an alpine-vserver
flavor.

Until now (up to Alpine-1.8.x) it have been based on Gentoo but nowdays
we are building Alpine on Alpine (my current build env is an alpine
vserver guest on my gentoo vservered desktop)

Alpine have a framework for web configuration (ACF) that is actively
developed. I think there was talk about a vserver module but i don't
think it is there yet. Other alternative is openvpnc for web. I think
someone started on an openvcp package for alpine but not sure.

Please join #alpine-linux or #alpine-devel on freenode for a chat.

http://alpinelinux.org

(yeah... i have same problem as vserver when it comes to
website/documentation)

-nc