From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1161039AbXDCRx4 (ORCPT ); Tue, 3 Apr 2007 13:53:56 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1161048AbXDCRx4 (ORCPT ); Tue, 3 Apr 2007 13:53:56 -0400 Received: from mail.nagafix.co.uk ([194.145.196.85]:53552 "EHLO mail.nagafix.co.uk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1161039AbXDCRxz (ORCPT ); Tue, 3 Apr 2007 13:53:55 -0400 Message-ID: <461294B0.5010303@nagafix.co.uk> Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 18:53:52 +0100 From: Antoine Martin User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (X11/20070304) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Blaisorblade CC: Jeff Dike , devzero@web.de, user-mode-linux-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [uml-devel] [RFC] UML kernel & rootfs bundle with every kernel release ? References: <1712880100@web.de> <20070402020530.GA589@c2.user-mode-linux.org> <4610D937.20002@nagafix.co.uk> <200704031943.15001.blaisorblade@yahoo.it> In-Reply-To: <200704031943.15001.blaisorblade@yahoo.it> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Blaisorblade wrote: > On luned́ 2 aprile 2007, Antoine Martin wrote: >> Jeff Dike wrote: >>> On Sun, Apr 01, 2007 at 08:58:45PM +0100, Antoine Martin wrote: >>>> I reckon that one critical thing which could drastically increase the >>>> user base would be to have a working virtual framebuffer implementation. >>> Why? I've never understood what a framebuffer gives you that you >>> don't have now. >> Just like the network auto-configuration via dhcp, > Hmm... for that to be completely plug-and-play you need to make sure a dhcp > server on the host exists. > > Vmware runs a separate DHCP server exactly for this, even if we should avoid > that as much as possible. It is trivial to write a shell script that takes care of setting up the interface and checks for the presence of a dhcp server. (the dhcpd.conf can be generated easily) The problem lies with the configuration options, I have got a bunch of shell scripts to take care of that, but it is quite hard to make them suitable for global consumption by the average user: * even with just tap networking, I use 4 different ways of hooking them up the outside world * firewalling and mac address filtering * bridging issues and ebtables * tmpfs and memory issues * selinux and chrooting issues... etc... [snip] > although it stopped working for me ages ago (probably for some UML bug). I > built a Mandrake image (that I now lost) with Xnest configured. With a script > on the host which passes the host IP and that calls xhost, it should work > easily. And btw, we need a standard startup script anyway. It would work, but it's not a pretty solution, it requires customizations to the guest and it would not be intuitive to new users. I would much prefer the ability to just run any distro (even framebuffer based ones) without modifications using the virtual framebuffer. >> It would also make it a lot easier to focus on writing a management UI, >> hell if there isn't one shortly after, I'll do one myself! > > Why not one management UI running from the host, a-la vmware? Yes ,that was what I had in mind. > Possibly, with > as much code as possible in scripting languages, for better transparency. Definitely, (see above) The management tools I have written export the guests' settings to the filesystem in the form of a shell script file, all the utility scripts just read those settings and do their stuff. (all in simple shell) Antoine >> Think of a UML browser image (running IE via wine in a limited image >> with just X + wine + IE - I would much prefer that to having wine+IE >> installed locally), testing framebuffer apps like gtk-fb/cairo-fb >> without risking your dev environment, etc... >> >> Antoine > > >