Re: NetBSD Jails

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Julien Savard <juliensavard17%gmail.com@localhost> writes:

> I won't debate on which is better between VM or containers. Both have their
> strength and weaknesses and in my opinion, usually your needs and skills
> makes one or the other the right choice for you. Nevertheless, I wanted
> (and still want) for a jail like feature in NetBSD. As I previously said
> VMs are great, however, they are mostly targeted to some architectures (
> amd64 and maybe aarch64?). I chose NetBSD because it can run on most
> "exotic" platforms ( Isn't its motto "Of course it runs NetBSD"). So it's
> my choice for my sparc32 and PowerPC platforms but not yet for my sparc64.
> Why? Because I really like and use Solaris zones and switching to an OS
> that does not support this feature would be a downgrade.
>
> As someone said, I guess I can build something custom around chroots or use
> something already created lying around ( like sailor) yeah... but the first
> point is, in a user perspective, it would be a serious time-saver to have
> standard instead of having each one our own way of dealing with chroot (ask
> lxc/jails/zones users) and the second point, NetBSD is known for its great
> portability. Its virtualization ( or containers) should respect that goal
> and I think a jail like feature being hardware agnostic would totally fit
> with this goal.
>
> I think the most of the NetBSD community would want/like this feature. The
> questions are : "Does the NetBSD Project/Kernel team want it ? If yes, what
> does they need to do it?"

I suspect a lot of the NetBSD community would think it nice if we had
jails (like FreeBSD), or some kind of container.  Your reference to
"Project/Kernel team", though, implies a higher degree of central
planning than exists.  While there are some funded projects and things
that many think are important, jails just aren't that high on the list.

So, someone needs to look at all the container systems, design what
makes sense for NetBSD, and start an argument about it.   Then someone
needs to write the code.   (Or, if "let's have jails like FreeBSD" is
viewed as sensible, integratee the FreeBSD code.)