Roadmap for features planed for containers where and Some future features ideas.

[Peter Dolding]

On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 10:13 PM, Eric W. Biederman
<ebiederm at xmission.com> wrote:
> "Peter Dolding" <oiaohm at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> http://opensolaris.org/os/community/brandz/  I would like to see if
>> something equal to this is on the roadmap in particular.   Being able
>> to run solaris and aix closed source binaries contained would be
>> useful.
>
> There have been projects to do this at various times on linux.  Having
> a namespace dedicated to a certain kind of application is no big deal.
> Someone would need to care enough to test and implement it though.
>
>> Other useful feature is some way to share a single process between PID
>> containers as like a container bridge.  For containers used for
>> desktop applications not having a single X11 server  interfacing with
>> video card is a issue.
>
> X allows network connections, and I think unix domain sockets will work.
> The latter I need to check on.

Does to a point until you see that local X11 is using shared memory
for speed.   Hardest issue is getting GLX working.

> The pid namespace is well defined and no a task will not be able
> to change it's pid namespace while running.  That is nasty.
Ok if that is imposable to extremely risky.

What about a form of a proxy pid in the pid namespace proxying
application chatter between 1 name space to another.  Applications
being the bridge if its not possible to do it invisible to application
could be made aware of it.   So they can provide shared memory and the
like across pid namespaces. But only where they have a activated proxy
to do there bidding.  This also allows applications to maintain there
own internal secuirty between namespaces.

Ie application is 1 pid number in its source container and virtual pid
numbers in the following containers.  Symbolic linking at task level
yes a little warped.  Yes this will annoying mean a special set of
syscalls and a special set of capabilities and restrictions.  Like PID
containers starting up forbidding proxy pid's or allowing them.

If I am thinking right that avoids not be able to change it's pid.
Instead sending and receiving the messages you need in the other name
space threw a small proxy.   Yes I know that will cost some
performance.

Basically want to setup a neat universal container way of handling
stuff like http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~andreslc/xen-gl/ without having
to go network and hopefully in a way that limitations don't have to
exist since messages are really only be sent threw 1 X11 server to 1
driver system.  Only thing is really sending the correct messages to
the correct place.   There will most likely be other services were a
single entity at times is preferred.   Worst out come is if proxying
.so is required.

Peter Dolding