From: Thomas Weber (l_vserver_at_mail2news.4t2.com)
Date: Tue 09 Nov 2004 - 22:31:48 GMT
On Tue, Nov 09, 2004 at 03:53:42PM +0100, Bj?rn Steinbrink wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Nov 2004 14:35:18 +0000 (UTC)
> Jesper Krogh <jesper_at_krogh.cc> wrote:
>
> > > well, debian source is debian source, linux-vserver
> > > patches are based on the vanilla kernel not on some
> > > distro kernel ...
> >
> > Ok.. so I'll go for the vanilla kernel in the next try.
> >
> > > > I'd really like to have a couple of vservers at my laptop for
> > > > testing software installations :-) Isn't this a common usage of
> > > > Vservers?
> > >
> > > yes, it is also common practice to avoid debian
> > > to get a working linux-vserver setup ...
> >
> > For any particular reason?
>
> Because debian packages are made to work with debian packages. That
> means that if you use the debian util-vserver package it is best to use
> their kernel patch and their helper stuff, it won't work too well with
> non debianized stuff. Problem is: debian stuff is often outdated, f.e.
> from what i remember debian has an (old) vserver patch for 2.6 (devel),
> but the tools are kept at 0.30 (stable), thus you can't use the new
> features (except if the debian maintainers wrote/backported tools...).
>
> Also, since some packages have very little in common with the upstream,
> it's a real pain to fix issues if you don't happen to be the debian
> maintainer.
>
> You should have a look at the list's
> archives and search for message from/to debian maintainers, maybe that
> helps understanding why, for linux-vserver, the debianized stuff is not
> the first choice.
>
> That said, i want to say that i've used debian a long time and i like
> it, but sometimes their (or a maintainer's, dunno) packaging policies
> don't fit a project very well. Linux-VServer is such a project as it
> seems.
It always depends on what you want to do. I run debian with the prepackaged
util-vserver package and selfmade kernels (2.4.x vanilla+vserver+some more
patches, no debian specific patches though) just fine on a couple of
boxes.
So the util package appears fine to me for the _stable_ series of
vserver. Can't say anything about the debian provided kernel patches.
These are probably very difficult to maintain since debian offers so
many different additional (optional) 'addon' kernel patches that the big
distributions just ignore. RedHat, Suse and others (except maybe gentoo)
just offer their prepacked kernel and don't care to integrate or offer
the more exotic stuff at all. Last time i looked RH didn't ship with a
vserver option. So usually you build your own vanilla+vserver kernel on
these systems anyway (or install a third party vserverenabled kernelrpm).
The _devel_ series of vserver and utils probably won't run out of the
box on any distribution. You either have to install third party packages
or compile utils and/or kernel yourself.
I wouldn't blame debian for trying to integrate at least _stable_ vserver
into their distribution - even if it's far from perfect right now.
And if your policy is not to compile anything yourself at all, you
may not be a candidate for the devel series of anything at all ;-)
Tom
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