Containers! - The "shot heard around the world"... DOCKERS

[gcmartin]

The industry is touting a new paradigm where an application, any application, will come to you in a "container" which you can deploy on whatever platform you desire. This means Unix/Linux/Apple/Microsoft/Minis/Mainframes/etc.

Containers, not a new term, but a new view on its use, is a Visualization technology. KVM and other hypervisors allow Puppy users to run addition distro OSes on their PUPs (LightHouse64, FATDOG, EmSEE, Just-LightHouse64, and some others are PUP distros where one can easily do this using Guides that are in the forum, today). So, for example, using EmSee the user boots and starts the QEMU Launcher from the Menu to run a virtual PC where a 2nd distro can be booted and run. In most cases, your 64bit PC will use KVM, a Linux kernel module, to get native speeds from both the running PUP and the distro in the virtual PC.

Containers goes further: It too uses Linux's built in services that supports its operations so that a "contained" application can be dropped onto the system and run and it will NOT step on the toes of any running applications in the running system. Imagine a metal container being lifted off of a train and loaded onto a truck trailer for transport.

With software defined networks (SDNs) growing in use and new data devices rapidly growing, a new kind of secure isolation of applications is occurring. You can run a container on your Puppy or on another PC on your LAN, or hosted on some webhost, or in the cloud where ALL YOU NEED is the application in its container.

It should not be too long before some PUP developer provides a PET, for PUPPY use, of these "Containers". Its open source and free to download and use.

• News clips are everywhere, since yesterday
• Dockers Open Source website
• Wikipedia says "Dockers ..."

This technology fits in with the directions of things already in the marketplace as well as much coming our way. And, important to this community, for it is Linux technology.

[amigo]

Actually, Docker is already being left behind for better container solutions.

[gcmartin]

Thinking ... Android and iOS, not to mention, IoTs and management for specifics not only in industry, but in home/personal use.

This is a key point to remember in the rise of this; 2 decades ago, JAVA started with a "run everywhere" strategy. Containers and the Tech industry giants are throwing their muscle to address similarly, with SDNs in the backlight of the Containers use for future manufacturing.

This post is just an attempt to reduce the complexity in understanding to a singularity. And, the thread intends an awareness, so that if kernel additions/changes and a PET shows up, community knows what it is intending to provide users.

[gcmartin]

Containers, the Open Source version is now fully run by The Linux Foundation. It goes into production with its 1st Official release where the scheduling obstacle has been overcome. Now has forward and backward mitigations solved, as well. Read here.

This comes on the heels of this announcement! And, even though it appears unrelated, they IS a relationship.

[ljward]

I'm fairly new to Puppy Linux and decided to go with Fatdog64 version 702. I was quite surprised with the amount of virtualization packages it came with. It has a package to support creating containers (package lxc-utilities).


For anyone who is curious and wants to try after installing the package I was able to successfully create an Ubuntu 16.04 container which I creatively named ubuntu1604 on Fatdog64 by just running the following:

lxc-create -t download -n ubuntu1604 -- --dist ubuntu --release xenial --arch amd64

To login you'll have to change the root password of the ubuntu container with:

chroot /var/lib/lxc/ubuntu1604/rootfs/
passwd
exit

Then you can start it and login with:
lxc-start -n ubuntu1604

If you want your container to have Internet access you'll need to setup a bridge and do more configuration.

Fatdog64 also has packages for qemu and User Mode Linux.