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Android container in Chrome OS

chromium.googlesource.com

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Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#2
Interesting to see Chrome OS adopt process compartmentalization techniques such as this, specifically adopting `cgroups'. Afaik, cgroups isn't enabled by default and requires customizing the kernel before you can enable it. At the very least, container tools such as Docker require symlinks too to invoke chroot-like filesystem isolation and this is also not available.

It'll interesting to see where they'll go with this, specifically since Google also work on Kubernetes and that new OS, Fuchsia.

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#3

Interesting to see Chrome OS adopt process compartmentalization techniques such as this, specifically adopting `cgroups'. Afaik, cgroups isn't enabled by default and requires customizing the kernel before you can enable it. At the very least, container tools such as Docker require symlinks too to invoke chroot-like filesystem isolation and this is also not available. It'll interesting to see where they'll go with thi…

Speaking of which, it is now possible to run full linux and android apps on chromebooks which support containers (and vms?) in a tab with the new official Google Crostini project. Makes the Pixelbook more attractive.

https://twitter.com/rothgar/status/981579699833880576

More info on Crostini https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/7ytpb1/project_cr...

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#4
I can't wait for the day that phone operating systems development environments are a docker pull away. It's encouraging to see Google approaching my ideal workflow using containerisation. Apple systems are great until you run into the garden walls and are forced to use closed-source single platform software like Xcode. Chrome OS and Android are a lot more open in many respects.

Hopefully efforts like this continue with Fuchsia and other Google products.

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#6

Interesting to see Chrome OS adopt process compartmentalization techniques such as this, specifically adopting `cgroups'. Afaik, cgroups isn't enabled by default and requires customizing the kernel before you can enable it. At the very least, container tools such as Docker require symlinks too to invoke chroot-like filesystem isolation and this is also not available. It'll interesting to see where they'll go with thi…

cgroups are pretty standard nowadays and all major distros have them enabled.

Any modern containerization tool depends on them for resource isolation.

Or are you talking about the ChromeOS kernel in particular?

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#7

Interesting to see Chrome OS adopt process compartmentalization techniques such as this, specifically adopting `cgroups'. Afaik, cgroups isn't enabled by default and requires customizing the kernel before you can enable it. At the very least, container tools such as Docker require symlinks too to invoke chroot-like filesystem isolation and this is also not available. It'll interesting to see where they'll go with thi…

No, cgroups is enabled on every major linux distro (though I'm too lazy to check if every configurable is set such that it will run this particular Android container). It's well-established base linux technology at this point, certainly nothing weird.

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#8

Interesting to see Chrome OS adopt process compartmentalization techniques such as this, specifically adopting `cgroups'. Afaik, cgroups isn't enabled by default and requires customizing the kernel before you can enable it. At the very least, container tools such as Docker require symlinks too to invoke chroot-like filesystem isolation and this is also not available. It'll interesting to see where they'll go with thi…

I don't work on Chrome OS, but my understanding is that one of the things that makes this possible is that Chrome OS requires device manufacturers to upstream kernel drivers for a device to be supported. This means that -- unlike Android -- it's always possible to rebuild a new kernel from source using the Chrome OS source tree.

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#9

Interesting to see Chrome OS adopt process compartmentalization techniques such as this, specifically adopting `cgroups'. Afaik, cgroups isn't enabled by default and requires customizing the kernel before you can enable it. At the very least, container tools such as Docker require symlinks too to invoke chroot-like filesystem isolation and this is also not available. It'll interesting to see where they'll go with thi…

cgroups are a dependency of systemd, so they're extremely standard. (I'm not sure what you mean by "customizing"; there are no binary builds of the Linux kernel available from the kernel developers, so everyone builds their own kernel.)

Not sure what you mean by symlinks either - the right primitives for secure filesystem isolation (pivot_root, etc.) are also very common. pivot_root is the normal way to switch from an initramfs to the real root filesystem, so it's also extremely prevalent.

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#10
Better is ChromeOS 67 enables running your own containers without having to put CB in developer.

It uses the KVM to run a second Linux kernel. So you will be able to use GNU/Linux applications including Steam. More to be shared at Google IO this year.

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