OverlaysFS offline tools

[Amir Goldstein]

> > - Overlayfs redirect_dir is not compatible with image building
> >
> >   redirect_dir is not compatible with image building and I think that's
> >   one reason that its not used by default. And as metacopy is dependent
> >   on redirect_dir, its not used by default as well. It can be used for
> >   running containers though, but one needs to know that in advacnce.
> >
> >   So it will be good if that's fixed with redirect_dir and metacopy
> >   features and then there is higher chance that these features are
> >   enabled by default.
> >
> >   Miklos had some ides on how to tackle the issue of getting diff
> >   correctly with redirect_dir enabled.
> >
> >   https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-unionfs/msg06969.html
> >
>
> FYI, I have been playing with kmxz's overlay (offline tools).
> It's a nice little tool :)
> Adding "awareness" to redirect and metacopy was easy [1].
>
> It should be easy to add support for command "export"
> that does what Miklos suggested in order to migrate an image with
> metacopy/redirect.
>

FYI, I took a swing at that and implemented the command "deref"
that implements Miklos' suggestion [1].
I am sure we could think of a better name, but whatever...

> I submitted a talk proposal to plumbers containers track about
> enabling overlayfs features in container runtimes.
>

FYI2, this is a draft of talking points for my talk on Plumbers [2].
My hope is that I could use 15min to introduce the new overlayfs features
and the challenges to integrate them with container runtimes and that we
will be able to spend the remaining 30min for open discussion.

Thanks,
Amir.

[1] https://github.com/kmxz/overlayfs-tools/pull/11
[2] https://github.com/amir73il/overlayfs/wiki/Overlayfs-and-containers