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Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines

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Re: Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines

#141

Post by sahil-shubham »

davidcollantes wrote: post #139
sahil-shubham wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice work on Shuru — I remember looking at it when I was researching this space. You went with a Rust wrapper on Apple’s Virtualization framework right? I have been working on something similar but on top of firecracker, called it bhatti ( https://github.com/sahil-shubham/bhatti ). I believe anyone with a spare linux box should be able to carve it into isolated programmable machines, without having to worry about pro…

Is there a way to store configuration/data of applications running on a Bhatti VM on the host, ala Docker volumes?

Yes! Checkout the bhatti volume

They are ext4 blocks which exist independent of sandboxes.

Re: Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines

#142

Post by linsomniac »

binsquare wrote: post #134
linsomniac wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any Windows support coming? My dev team is on Windows, this could be a game-changer.

Wsl2 runs a Linux vm so it definitely feasible and has the api's necessary. It is on the roadmap, but frankly I haven't used Windows in a decade. I would love for a contributor to take that on as part of the free and open source spirit. Sounds like it could be you? :)

>Sounds like it could be you? :)

I wish it could, but, like your housekeeper, I don't do Windows. ;-)

Re: Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines

#143

Post by weird-eye-issue »

naikrovek wrote: post #140
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you so concerned about the LLM producing the exact same code across different sessions? Seems like a really weird thing to focus on. Why aren't you focused on things like security, maintainability, UI/UX, performance?

Comp-sci people like repeatability when they want that and true randomness when that is desired. Things in between are rarely desired. In computing, things are much more useful when they behave in predictable ways. Even AI, many (most?) would argue.

Computer science and software development are hardly related

Re: Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines

#144

Post by jaytheseveloper »

PufPufPuf wrote: post #34
binsquare wrote: post #2

Hello, I'm building a replacement for docker containers with a virtual machine with the ergonomics of containers + subsecond start times. I worked in AWS previously in the container space + with firecracker. I realized the container is an unnecessary layer that slowed things down + firecracker was a technology designed for AWS org structure + usecase. So I ended up building a hybrid taking the best of containers with…

Hey this is super cool. I've been researching tech like this for my AI sandboxing solution, ended up with Lima+Incus: https://github.com/JanPokorny/locki My problem with microVMs was that they usually won't run docker / kubernetes, I work on apps that consist of whole kubernetes clusters and want the sandbox to contain all that. Does your solution support running k3s for example?

Curious what prevented you from running docker in a microvm? I've successfully run docker in qemu and firecracker microvms.

Re: Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines

#145

Post by jaytheseveloper »

simonreiff wrote: post #62

Hey this is pretty neat! I definitely would try using this for benchmarks and other places where I need strong isolation as Docker is just too bloated and slow, but sadly I don't think I can run this natively on my Windows laptop. I hope you extend to WSL! Good luck and congrats on launch.

If you're using wsl2, /dev/kvm should be available. You may need to install a couple extra packages to enable kvm etc.

Re: Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines

#146

Post by rcarmo »

binsquare wrote: post #125
rcarmo wrote: post #124

Would love to have this as a Proxmox guest type

Smolvm is free and open source, help me build the integration with proxmox - I'm not familiar with it

I ended up realizing that QEMU already supports microVMs and shipped https://github.com/rcarmo/pve-microvm yesterday. It's working out great for me, even if it's not portable in the same way (I can always do a .qcow dump, I guess)

Re: Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines

#147

Post by anthk »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #143
naikrovek wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comp-sci people like repeatability when they want that and true randomness when that is desired. Things in between are rarely desired. In computing, things are much more useful when they behave in predictable ways. Even AI, many (most?) would argue.

Computer science and software development are hardly related

Check the Plan9/9front papers or IWP's and say that again after reading the docs on GeFS for instance.

Re: Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines

#148

Post by weird-eye-issue »

anthk wrote: post #147
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer science and software development are hardly related

Check the Plan9/9front papers or IWP's and say that again after reading the docs on GeFS for instance.

Thanks you proved my point

Re: Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines

#149

Post by davidcollantes »

sahil-shubham wrote: post #141
davidcollantes wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to store configuration/data of applications running on a Bhatti VM on the host, ala Docker volumes?

Yes! Checkout the bhatti volume They are ext4 blocks which exist independent of sandboxes.

Wow, that’s quite nice! I see that’s at VM time, any plans to add the ability to add them after the fact? I am really enjoying bhatti!
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