11–20 of 187 posts
My gut instinct is always that using traditional kernels in a unikernel way is a bit suboptimal because it doesn’t become a “library operating system” in the same way that Mirage does.
Free software is great, but not everyone is in the position where they can release all of their code all the time.
For a unikernel to be viable it can't have copyleft code in it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is a unikernel and why it's good?
Yeah I’m kind of amazed they don’t start out with explaining this. Usually there is at least a one-line explanation. From Wikipedia: “A unikernel is a specialised, single address space machine image constructed by using library operating systems. A developer selects, from a modular stack, the minimal set of libraries which correspond to the OS constructs required for their application to run. These libraries are then…
Third paragraph
> The unikernel is a cloud-era handle for the classic systemstechnique of linking an application with a library of oper-ating system components (including memory management,scheduler, network stack and device drivers) into a singleflat address space, creating standalone binary image that isbootable directly on (virtual) hardware [22]. The advantageof this approach is that kernel functionality can be special-ized to fit the needs of the target application to increasethe performance of the application or to support it within ahighly restricted execution domain.
And second chapter.
That appears to come from the FAQ on Github for "rumprun" dated 2015.
Rump kernels were introduced in NetBSD in 2009. It was an described then as an acronym for runnable userspace meta programs.
https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/runnable_userspace_meta_pr...
I have not used rumprun for Linux but I still use the rump utilities included with NetBSD.
Unikernels are typically statically linked. Using copyleft code means the whole resulting binary is subject to copyleft. Free software is great, but not everyone is in the position where they can release all of their code all the time. For a unikernel to be viable it can't have copyleft code in it.
http://sci-hub.tw/10.1145/3317550.3321445
Maybe link the top-level post there?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is a unikernel and why it's good?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unikernel Whether it's good depends on what you're doing. UKL will[1] allow you to link a regular server application to Linux and then run that single binary on baremetal or in a hypervisor, and give you a decent performance boost over running the application on top of a normal kernel. How much of a performance boost depends a great deal on the program, almost everything will be a few pe…
My gut instinct is always that using traditional kernels in a unikernel way is a bit suboptimal because it doesn’t become a “library operating system” in the same way that Mirage does.
Only the bits of Linux which are used are linked in, same as when you link together any program. The big advantage of using Linux is driver support - you can run a UKL application on baremetal, linking to the drivers needed to run on the target hardware.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unikernel Whether it's good depends on what you're doing. UKL will[1] allow you to link a regular server application to Linux and then run that single binary on baremetal or in a hypervisor, and give you a decent performance boost over running the application on top of a normal kernel. How much of a performance boost depends a great deal on the program, almost everything will be a few pe…
As I've always understood it, it's not just performance but also security: there's a lot less code running with your code which cuts the surface area for bugs and thus security holes.