Re: [Vserver] A possible new idea

From: Herbert Poetzl <herbert_at_13thfloor.at>
Date: Wed 10 May 2006 - 23:35:38 BST
Message-ID: <20060510223538.GA24788@MAIL.13thfloor.at>

On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 05:17:55PM -0400, Fareha Shafique wrote:
> Herbert Poetzl wrote:
>
> >On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 02:46:34PM -0400, Fareha Shafique wrote:
> >
> >>After asking various questions about unification, I don't think
> >>vhashify quite supports what I have in mind. I wanted to get some
> >>opinions/ideas from the users of this mailing list.
> >>
> >>I am thinking if vservers can somehow be used to provide MAC
> >>(Mandatory Access Control) through containers. For example, a
> >>vserver shares the same filesystem as the host server, with read
> >>and write access to the host files being defined through a set of
> >>MAC policies. In this way, different policies can be defined for
> >>different vservers. Also, writes can be contained within a vserver
> >>(so that if a file is written to, a copy is made in the vserver's
> >>space) and integrated with the host only through explicit 'commits'
> >>to allow, for example, new configurations to be tested in an
> >>environment exactly the same as the host server and then transferred
> >>to the host using a commit.
> >
> >>Any comments please?
> >
> >sounds interesting, any ideas how to realize this?
> >
> Well, my first impression of vservers was that it provided a kind of
> containment that I have mentioned. I mean after quickly going over the
> short introduction, I thought that a vserver has read only access to
> the host server's files and CoW is used whenever the vserver modifes a
> file. However, after installing a vserver, I realized this was not the
> case. And after asking a few questions on the mailing list, I learnt
> that there is no direct way to do this. I was hoping to find out what
> some of those involved in the development of linux-vserver thought
> about the feasibility of this idea.

well, yes, they did :)

> So basically, at the moment, I don't really have much idea how to
> realize this, but I am hoping those more involved with vserver will
> some ideas to share :)

aha, good, well, what would be the advantage over the
currently established way to do this, i.e. have a
template (some cleaned up version of your host system)
and update guests either individually or at-once with
the v* tools (like vrpm, vapt, vyum ...)?

why would somebody want to _share_ the host files with
the guest, instead of having a separate filesystem for
them?

note: I'm just trying to figure the rationale behind
this suggestion ...

best,
Herbert

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Received on Wed May 10 23:36:00 2006

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