OpenVZ

An OpenVZ Experiment - How many containers?

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I was wondering just how many OpenVZ containers I could create on a beefy machine and how many processes the Linux kernel would be happy running so I decided to do an experiment.

I have two OpenVZ hosts... one is the primary and the other is a backup machine. Both of them are HP Proliant DL380 Gen5 machines with dual, quad-core Xeon processors, 32GB of RAM, 32GB of swap, and a 600GB /vz partition. I decided to use the backup OpenVZ machine for the experiment.


The Linux Link Tech Show Archive

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Wow, being a guest on The Linux Link Tech Show... with fantastic hosts Dann, Linc, Allan, and Pat... was great. I had a lot of fun. Yes, there were some technical problems at the beginning of the show that caused it to start a little late... and unfortunately I didn't have a way to boost my volume... and I don't know how it sounded live because I wasn't tuned into the live stream... but the archive recording isn't too bad. I'm guessing Dann cranked up the volume whenever I was talking.

For those who missed the live show, here are links to the .ogg and .mp3 archives:

tllts_278-12-17-08.ogg
tllts_278-12-17-08.mp3


Screencast: A Brief Introduction to OpenVZ

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The first "Introduction to OpenVZ" screencast that I did was over 1.5 years ago and it has become somewhat outdated... so I decided to make a new one.

If desired, you may download the full-quality Ogg Theora video:
openvz-brief-intro.ogv (114MB) (Right-click, Save Link As...)

Screencast: vzpkg2 & pkg-cacher

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Robert Nelson released an updated version of vzpkg2, pkg-cacher as well as OS Template Metadata packages for Fedora, CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu. In all there are 48 different OS Templates that can easily be made using this software and I'm wanting to get more people in the community interested so I made a screencast.

If you want the full-quality version, right-click on the following URL and save as. It is an Ogg Theora video and recorded with gtk-recordMyDesktop:

vzpkg2-screencast.ogv (69MB) (Right-click, Save Link As...)

Interview: vzpkg2 and pkg-cacher creator Robert Nelson

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Robert Nelson seems to have come out of nowhere with an update to vzpkg. Before we get started let me briefly review what vzpkg is.

An OS Template is what OpenVZ uses as install media so you may install a Linux distribution into a container... since you cannot use a traditional CD-ROM / DVD nor .iso disk image. An OS Template is a .tar.gz file that represents a somewhat stripped down version of an installed Linux distribution as you would find it installed on a disk filesystem. So, if you want to create a CentOS 5.2 i386 container, you need to find an CentOS 5.2 i386 OS Template.

There are a number of recipes on the OpenVZ wiki for building OS Templates for various Linux distributions but the general process takes several steps and is quite a bit of work. Any tool that can simplify the creation (and updating) of an OS Template is a welcome addition. OpenVZ comes with vzpkgcache (part of the vzpkg package) which is designed to facilitate OS Template creation for Red Hat based distributions.

Containers in mainline Linux kernel when?

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I'm a long time reader and subscriber to LWN (Linux Weekly News). LWN is probably the best Linux news site out there with regards to covering kernel development and I often find myself eating up considerable amounts of time sifting through their articles. This week they had an article covering some recent progress in the mainline kernel on checkpointing and restoring of processes and containers of processes... and I wrote a somewhat lengthy response that I decided to share here. I would link to the LWN's original article but it won't be anonymously accessible until next week.


Running with the Proxmox VE ball?

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I sent this to the centos-virt mailing list today... and thought I'd share it here as well.

Greetings,

I'm a big OpenVZ fanboy. I've sent a few emails on this list that proves that... and I'm sure I've annoyed some people... but be that as it may... I would like to draw everyone on this list's attention to Proxmox VE. What is Proxmox VE?


Linux World Conference and Expo - Day Three

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Ok, so here I am with yet another late write up. This is for day three of LWCE 2008 which was Thursday, August 7th... the last day of the show.

Marc and KirMarc and KirWalking around some

Marc was able to help man the OpenVZ booth some today. He lives in San Bruno and took BART to the show... so I got the chance to actually walk around the exhibit floor some, take some pictures and talk to a few people. I posted about 199 photos to the LWCE 2008 photo gallery.

After walking around some it became increasingly obvious to me that the number of exhibitors (when compared to last year) was way down. There were a lot more open spaces and the amount of room between isles seemed bigger. There were also a number of new areas that took up room including the Installfest, Software Central, the App Zone, Linux Garage and the Center Stage.

Linux World Conference and Expo - Day Two

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I didn't get a chance to write this up yesterday... but here is my report for Day Two - Wednesday, August 6th.

[Update:] Check out the LWCE 2008 photo gallery.

FreeBSD BoothFreeBSD BoothFreeBSD Shenanigans

Ok, so I should have noticed this on Day One but I didn't. No one showed up to man the Debian booth which was actually one booth over from us. I have no idea why... although there was a hand written sign that said many of the Debian folks were in Argentina at some Debian specific conference. Ok?!?

Oddly enough no one showed up to man the Gentoo booth either. It was in the next isle over from us. There wasn't any explanation as to why their booth was empty. Eventually someone took the Gentoo sign down.

As has been a tradition, FreeBSD had a booth at Linux World. The same folks were manning the FreeBSD booth as last year... and they also made it to as were at Linuxfest Northwest back in April. Them seem to have a good source of funding for the shows. I wonder how many shows they go to a year. Since they are such a fixture at so many Linux shows they are well known and are quite friendly folks. They had a ton of PC-BSD install CDs that they were giving away. If you are lucky enough to be befriended by any of them, you are rewarded with a set of devil horns to wear. Most of the Joomla booth staff were wearing horns.

At some point the FreeBSD folks noticed that the Debian and Gentoo booths were uninhabited so they decided to take them over. They covered the Debian and Gentoo booth tables with PC-BSD install media. At one point they even had a person sitting at the booths. The joke was that BSD stands for "Beats the Sh1t out of Debian". I thought the practice was tacky but in their defence someone in the Joomla booth said that the FreeBSD booth staff were really good friends with the Debian booth staff who would appreciate the joke.

Linux World Conference and Expo - Day One

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Today was the first day of the Linux World Conference and Expo 2008 in San Francisco. This is my second time attending LWCE as a exhibitor... being part of the OpenVZ Project booth. LWCE is primarily a conference for business people using Linux in a business environment. It has a rather large exhibit floor (think football field size), several keynote presentations from executives in leading industries and I believe this is the 12th year the show has been running.

This year the show seems a little smaller although it is hard to know for sure without comparing numbers (which I don't have handy). My only point of reference being the exhibit floor which appears to have fewer exhibitors, wider isles... and this year there is an "Installfest" section that takes up a bit of room... that makes one wonder if they decided to add it to eliminate a big chunk of empty space.


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