RE: [PATCH][CFT] per-process namespaces for Linux

From: Peter J. Braam (braam@mountainviewdata.com)
Date: Mon Feb 26 2001 - 11:26:23 EST


Hi Al,

Very neat!

Ron Minnich and I built something similar: we built private namespaces for
login sessions. Ours have slightly different semantics I think.

To do so we changed mount+chroot into "imount" (i = invisible). This landed
a process in a file system that had no root in the Unix directory tree.
(see the "Private name spaces, PNS" project on SourceForge.

We added another goodie, which was called "memdev". It provided a new block
device from a private, i.e. copy on write, memory mapped block device. See
"memdev" on SourceForge.

We used it as follows:

 - when you login, you get imounted into an environment where you have full
priviliges (except mknod). The "/" of your environment is not a directory
in the Unix tree.
 - in this environment the system file systems are available to you on a
copy on write private basis.
 - any files you change get out over a network file system to a server. We
used InterMezzo backed by a ramfs cache.

When the user logs out, everything is gone, except possibly footprints in
swap.

- Peter J. Braam -

Mountain View Data, Inc.

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 28 2001 - 21:00:11 EST