Slashdot Mirror
Booting an x86 Virtual Machine from an iPod
randomjohndoe writes "IBM has taken the next logical extension of booting Linux from a flash drive. Researchers were recently able to boot Knoppix from an iPod and run an x86 virtual machine in VMware, which provided an easy way to encrypt the whole operating environment. The tests were conducted on a 60GB iPod photo using Knoppix."
next week, stay tuned for when they are going to install windows on a 1 gb usb keydrive!!
It's not designed to have the HD running very hard, either. Run an OS off your iPod for ten minutes and that bad boy is smokin' hot.
there's more than one way to do me.
You know, the installation of Mac OS X on my iPods and external, bus-powered FireWire LaCie drives are all bootable on any Macintosh with built-in FireWire (minus the B&W G3's and PCI G4's).
You can even store your iTunes folder on the iPod, and use iTunes to load the thing...
So basically, IBM is just saying that they've discovered that hard drives are a lot smaller and cheaper than they used to be. Wow. I'm impressed!
That's kinda a stretch. IBM is a corporation, not a government agency. If the government pays them, I'm sure it's to buy stuff or pay for specific tasks, not "here's some money. kk thx."
If you buy IBM products, it's no longer your money, it's theirs. Likewise, if I buy a used iPod from you, would you want me telling you how to spend that money?
Plus, what they're doing is proof of concept type stuff. Research. Not enough companies to this kind of stuff anymore. Xeorx, AT&T, DEC.. all gone. IBM does research on a lot more then this too - they're into a lot of shit. I say we encourage them to keep it up. Because it's not like Microsoft does any cool stuff like this.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I mean *useful* stuff on knoppix, like LVM support.
Now that would be *radical*!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
For all you who didn't RTFA, they are booting from a USB mass storage device (which just happens to be an iPod) running Knoppix, and virtualizing the hardware to allow a less flexible OS (*cough* windows *cough*) to run on virtually any x86 hardware. The benefit being that you can take your Windows desktop's "Soul" with you on your iPod and just plug it in and go wherever you have a computer handy. Nothing revolutionary here except that IBM is starting to push this tword a dedicated device and software that should make setting this sort of thing up easier for the layperson. Pretty soon grandma will be toting her windows install, complete with Word, Explorer, and her favorite games downloaded from Yahoo, all on her trendy iPod which she can also use to listen to cool tunes when she's on the plane and doesn't have her grandson's computer to borrow.
Personally I think this trend could be a very good thing, what with the horrible attempts at separation of user data in current operating systems where the majority of the data is actually shared.
The computer industry seems to be moving at different speeds. Today, for example, you can buy a 64-bit CPU that operates at 3gHz, 32-bit memory that operates at 400mHz, and a 128-bit graphics card with 300mHz RAMDAC. Nobody seems interested in designing a complete system in the PC industry -- instead all the "progress" is in optimizing or extending components and hoping they work when you throw them together.
While generally I'd agree with that statement, it's not quite as clear cut as you make out. most programs run in small loops, so while your entire system may have 1gb of physical ram, it also has a few mb in cache spread through the various chips (like the CPU, graphics chip etc) eg a P4 with HT has atleast 512k cache. Most of the time the CPU is only using that cache and not using the system memory.
In short while it's a good idea to get everything working together and talking faster, in most cases bigger cache's and improving adding / seperating the busses will produce the desired effect without the additional costs & other problems involved with getting everything communicating at the same speed as the CPU.
and while this sounds like an interesting hack I wish more focus would be placed on making the entire platform secure.
I'd say this system actually did this part. I mean, after all, the SoulPad software features an encrypting userspace kernel module to encrypt the file system, thus making it a secure solution. Anything short of TPA really couldn't do a better job. And we know how slashdotters feel about that.
As for the rest of your comment, bullshit. Has nothing to do with anything. Encryption in software will always and forever be better than encryption in hardware because as that hardware ages, bugs will be found, and holes will be punched. If it's a software file system, you're inconvienenced by a few hours of decrypting all your files and re-encrypting at the most, or just patching your system in the least. Meanwhile with your solution, you'd throw away the whole computer.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
The point here isn't the hardware they ran it on, but rather the software they designed to make a workstation that's truly hardware (or at least processor-and-mobo) independent. You can take the box away, plug it into a different workstation somewhere, and it comes right back up as if it was your own computer.
... buy why get a boring old FW drive when you can get a cool sexy white one that every executive will remember and know about, and also is cool to use to play music on when you're done with the project?
Think about how many employees IBM has worldwide. It's in the hundreds of thousands. Think of how much it costs to equip them all with Thinkpads (even if they are made by Lenovo now). Now think about the money you could save if even a small percentage of those people could get a $200 box instead of a laptop, and just plug it into any available desktop. That's the think driving development here, I think.
That they chose the iPod to demo the software on probably has a lot more to do with showmanship and use of budget than any technical requirement. Any FW drive would have worked
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Given that you can install Linux on a dead badger... I'm afraid the answer to your question is a resounding negative.
Now seriously, at times it seems like any crap gets the /. front page if it mentions an iPod. I remember for example the front page story (I'm too lazy to search and post the link though) about using a lot of iPods as USB hard drives to haul around movie footage.
/. editor) for whom the mere mention of an iPod makes something newsworthy. Because whoa, it's an iPod! Any example of someone using it, in no matter how trivial and normal a way, is automatically soo cool.
And just like in this case, an overpriced USB HDD at that, if used for only that purpose. For all its merits as an MP3 player, if you're going to use it _only_ as an external HDD, there are much cheaper HDD's around.
I don't know, there seems to be a segment of the population (and apparently at least one is a
I'm guessing that if I posted a blog about me backing up my downloaded WoW patches on an iPod, or saving mom's digital photos on an iPod, I could get front page on Slashdot too. Heck, probably even using it as an MP3 player could get front page, if for example I hoooked it to my speakers and used it for music for a dance party.
But, yeah, unless you fall into that population segment, there's absolutely no reason to think anything other than "big deal".
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What makes this newsworthy is that they have developed a way to put an OS, applications, and datafiles all together on one portable device.
Yeah amazing! One day though they will come out with portable "optical discs" with holes in the middle that you can store all your data and applications on. Word has it the going term in research circles is "versatile discs". Further down the road are magnetic hard drives so small you can take them with you in your briefcase.
Once these developments become commercially viable this "iPod/Soul" scheme will appear absolutely jurassic.
PS. You can boot any apple mac off an ipod to run your "soul" on any old persons apple PC.