VirtualBox KVM Public Release

Re:VirtualBox KVM Public Release by nonrandomstring on Thursday February 08, 2024 @06:10AM (#39300626)

Is there a connection to User Mode Linux (UML) from around the same time? Or are these completely unrelated projects? I get that running a kernel in the user space provided by another kernel is not really the same as a proper hypervisor, but have never really dug deep into why and what the various tradeoffs are.

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Re:VirtualBox KVM Public Release by blitzclone on Thursday February 08, 2024 @06:53AM (#39300893)

There is no real connection to UML here. Hardware virtualization (Intel VT, AMD-V) are much faster in practice and also don't require the guest operating system to be heavily modified. So besides as curiosity or test vehicle, approaches like UML are pretty dead.

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Re:VirtualBox KVM Public Release by nonrandomstring on Thursday February 08, 2024 @09:19AM (#39302169)

Thanks.

So, slow as it may be, the win for UML (which seems to still have a heartbeat) is that it can run on uP without any specific virtualisation capabilities, right? If I could run Linux on a Z80/6502 then in theory I could run a virtualised Linux on a Z80/6502.

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Re:VirtualBox KVM Public Release by mark_undoio on Thursday February 08, 2024 @10:25AM (#39302988)

Yes - plus the original win of UML was also being able to run virtual instances on a kernel without proper virtualization capabilities.

In the early 2000s people used to use UMLs as a hosting platform - they didn't have the same security isolation as a proper VM (or even, necessarily, of a container) though.

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Re:VirtualBox KVM Public Release by als0 on Thursday February 08, 2024 @10:42AM (#39303230)

How do containers have better security isolation than UML?

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Re:VirtualBox KVM Public Release by nonrandomstring on Thursday February 08, 2024 @11:43AM (#39304150)

When I tinkered with UML I think it was prior to cgroups (2007) [0] so my guess is that escaping the UML instance was easier.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cgroups

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Re:VirtualBox KVM Public Release by ComputerGuru on Thursday February 08, 2024 @10:46AM (#39303282)

The “original” UML is/was, I believe, NetBSD running as a “rump kernel” and something that virtualization of the actual kernel does not, directly and on its own, fill the shoes of.

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Re:VirtualBox KVM Public Release by monocasa on Thursday February 08, 2024 @10:59AM (#39303480)

UML is older than NetBSD rump kernels.

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Re:VirtualBox KVM Public Release by ComputerGuru on Thursday February 08, 2024 @11:30AM (#39303968)

I stand corrected.

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Re:VirtualBox KVM Public Release by actionfromafar on Thursday February 08, 2024 @11:53AM (#39304272)

I want to know what Linux a386 was. Couldn't ever really understand what it did.

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