Xen 2.0 Virtual Machine

[Brian Kelsay]

I went and read most of the HOWTO on User-mode Linux and I have to say, I'm not sure if it actually gives you a good impression of a new kernel being able to run on your hardware.  The host kernel is still in the way.  You use virtual devices and filesystems.  Sure, it's safe, but it won't tell you definitively if the new kernel works on your hardware.  

Now if you want to test other software on a specific kernel without risking crashing the system, then this appears to be the answer you've been looking for.   Or if you want to test features of a new kernel, then this would work.  If you want to host an app like a webserver in a controlled/limited environment, giving near root privileges to a user, then this may work also, but a chrooted jail might be better.  Then again, I could be wrong.  

User-mode appears to use less resources than a Xen, VMWare or Bochs, as does chroot, but that is Linux on Linux only.  Each can have its place.

Brian Kelsay

>>> "Brian Kelsay" <> 11/08/04 08:20AM >>>

Are you possibly referring to User-Mode Linux?  That is the only thing that comes close to the discussion at hand.  http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/ 
Not until I found that page did your post make sense.

Brian Kelsay

>>> David Nicol <davidnicol> 11/06/04 10:26PM >>>
Isn't UML the preferred way to do that?


On Fri, 05 Nov 2004 14:45:15 -0600, Thomas Bruno <crweb@> wrote:
> It would be a better solution per cost, if all you wanted was to run
> Linux on Linux.