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Introduction to User-Mode Linux
developerWorks writes "Ever wish you had a place to let your Linux applications play -- where they wouldn't hurt anything else? Do your killer apps spend too much time killing each other? Originally conceived as a kernel developer's tool, UML lets you set up multiple virtual machines that are isolated from each other and from the hardware. Now, you can test applications all the way to failure without breaking the host system -- or even requiring a reboot. Veteran administrator Carla Schroder shows you how in this tutorial."
Even worse, the story was submitted by the people who want you to register -- developerWorks.
... if you guys were mixing in advertising with real stories ... like portals do with "search results" ... you'd let us know, right? Right?
Hey timothy
Joe
http://www.joegrossberg.com
A couple of years ago, I went on vacation with no net access and only my laptop. I wanted to do network programming during my vacation. I set up four VMWare virtual machines running FreeBSD and did my little program (user-mode NFS server). Got a lot done in a short time (probably due to the lack of net access - had all the necessary docs saved ahead of time). I chose FreeBSD because it was much easier to cut down to a tiny image than any Linux distro (even Slackware, my favorite).
VMWare is also useful if you want to do OS-level programming (eg, write a kernel). This is one of my spare time projects (haven't touched it in years, though). I'd imagine user-mode Linux can't let you mess with the low-level stuff, but it could be useful for high-level stuff like scheduling algorithms and so forth (useful because it's a real PITA to boot up a machine whenever you change a line of code and user-mode Linux might give you some better debugging options than a serial cable).
You might be able to do this with Bochs nowadays, but Bochs was nowhere near useful back then. Seems to have come a long way in a short time.
Not sure what advantages user-mode Linux would have over VMWare or Bochs. Perhaps some karma whore would like to register and post the contents of the article :)?
...could this be a possible way to have "more" security while running and hooked to the net? Is there any angle here to make the virtual OS that's connected be totally locked away from the actual OS that runs everything, so that in the event of a major "owning" you could delete that virtual system, then reproduce it easily from a "spare" OS with it's set of apps that's already installed and clean? Sort of like the knoppix idea?