21–30 of 162 posts
its a really innovative idea! very interested in the subsecond coldstart claim, how does it achieve that?
@binsquare basically brute-force trimmed down unnecessary linux kernel modules, tried to get the vm started with just bare minimum. There are more rooms for improvement for sure. We will keep trying!
Though my version was only tested on Linux hosts
*yes, FreeBSD is specifically developed against Firecracker which is specifically avoided w "Smol machines", but interesting nonetheless
[0] https://github.com/NetBSDfr/smolBSD
[1] https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/freebsd-fire...
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…
+1. i built something similar called shuru.run because i wanted an easy way to set up microVM sandboxes to run some of my AI apps, and firecracker wasn't available for macOS (and, as you said, it is just too heavy for normal user-level workloads).
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 provisioning them or their lifecycle.
The documentation’s still early but I have been using it for orchestrating parallel work (with deploy previews), offloading browser automation for my agents etc. An auction bought heztner server is serving me quite well :)
This looks very cool. Does the VM machinery still work if I run it in a bubblewrap? Can it talk to a GPU? Can you pipe into one? It would be cute if I could wget in machine 1 and send that result to offline machine 2 for processing.
Yes! GPU passthrough is being actively worked on and will land in next major release: https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm/pull/96
Yea just tried piping, it works:
``` smolvm machine exec --name m1 -- wget -qO- https://example.com/data.csv \ | smolvm machine exec --name m2 -i -- python3 process.py ```
Earlier quoted context omitted.
@binsquare basically brute-force trimmed down unnecessary linux kernel modules, tried to get the vm started with just bare minimum. There are more rooms for improvement for sure. We will keep trying!
With this approach I managed to get to sub-10ms start (to pid1), if you can accept a few constraints there's plenty of room! Though my version was only tested on Linux hosts
Probably a lot of other neat usecases for this, too
smolvm pack create --image python:3.12-alpine -o ./python312
./python312 run -- python3 --version
# Python 3.12.x — isolated, no pyenv/venv/conda neededBasically any open source project nowadays run their software stack in containers often requiring docker compose. Unfortunatley Smol machines do not support Docker inside the microvms and they also do not support nested VMs for things that use Vagrant. I think this is a big drawback.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1. i built something similar called shuru.run because i wanted an easy way to set up microVM sandboxes to run some of my AI apps, and firecracker wasn't available for macOS (and, as you said, it is just too heavy for normal user-level workloads).
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…
also, yes, shuru was (still) a wrapper over the Virtualization.framework, but it now supports Linux too (wrapper over KVM lol)
see too[0][1] for projects of a similar* vein, incl historical account. *yes, FreeBSD is specifically developed against Firecracker which is specifically avoided w "Smol machines", but interesting nonetheless [0] https://github.com/NetBSDfr/smolBSD [1] https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/freebsd-fire...
microvm space is still underserved.