Greetings All,
Hope that everyone is staying safe.
Now that I have started to dig heavily back into NOVA from taking a hiatus from a number of projects, I also wanted to get ramped back up with digging into the latest Genode as well.
In the past, my basic goals were to have NOVA (hypervisor) with a single instance Virtualbox (VMM), and Genode as the GUI and to provide the glue to bring it all together.
Now I want to reinvestigate all of this to see what might be achievable, but looking at the Genode Sculpt OS, it kinda seems like a bit of overkill for what I wanted.
In the past, NOVA (demo 0.3) had some night little features that just booted up extremely fast and allowed you to start up some simple VM's under the NUL framework using the Vancouver VMM. I thought that was very nice but also thought that if I could figure out how to get a Genode GUI on something like that and perhaps utilize the ported version of VirtualBox as a single instance VMM that was stable and fast then I could use that as my basis instead.
Of course, I also investigated Muen and its possible inclusion in this scheme but now with some good input from Norman, I think that it is better not to have Muen included.
So then, now I am wondering what the simplest setup would be to have just NOVA, VirtualBox and Genode (for the GUI and some drivers like audio, video, etc. for VBox) in an extremely small footprint.
Also, I am wondering how much more advanced VirtualBox has become on Genode since when I last looked at it there was really no way that it could realistically be used for any type of real usage, but I am sure that has changed since then.
Anyway, I would like to get any thoughts or suggestions that the wonderful people on the Genode mailing list might like to offer as I am still interested in building out this ultra-small hypervisor project.
Cheers and stay safe, my friends. Lonnie
Hi Lonnie,
Now I want to reinvestigate all of this to see what might be achievable, but looking at the Genode Sculpt OS, it kinda seems like a bit of overkill for what I wanted.
I encourage you to take a second look. Sculpt OS is pretty much bare-bone. The default bootable image [1] is 27 MiB in size. With the wireless driver removed, the image weights only 16 MiB. This includes the kernel, the GUI stack, fundamental drivers (network, USB, NVMe, SATA, display, PS/2), and the software installation/update mechanism. It is specifically designed to be a suitable base for scenarios like the one you describe.
[1] https://genode.org/download/sculpt
If you find Sculpt OS not suited for your scenario, I would very much appreciate to learn why. So we can take your feedback into account for upcoming versions.
Also, I am wondering how much more advanced VirtualBox has become on Genode since when I last looked at it there was really no way that it could realistically be used for any type of real usage, but I am sure that has changed since then.
As one data point, I'm using Virtualbox on Sculpt as my only OS on my laptop everyday to get all my work done. ;-)
Anyway, I would like to get any thoughts or suggestions that the wonderful people on the Genode mailing list might like to offer as I am still interested in building out this ultra-small hypervisor project.
During the design of Sculpt, I actually had our previous conversations (from some years ago) in the back of my head. Back then, the attempt to replicate the NOVA demo based on Genode would have required too much effort on your side. So you understandably dropped out. Given this experience, one of the major goals behind Sculpt OS was to dramatically reduce this effort - to empower people like you to pursue product ideas without getting too much sucked-in into hairy technical details.
Should you succeed in using Sculpt OS as your base, I'd call Sculpt a success. If you give it a go and need further guidance beyond the documentation [2], you are always welcome to post here.
[2] https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-20-02
Cheers Norman
Morning Norman,
I truly thank you for all of the positive support and quick feedback that you have given me over the years as I work towards building just a simple idea into a workable user product as it goes far beyond just building an ultra-slim hypervisor and if these rudimentary steps go well then you will see more of the global idea unfold into the paradigm shift that I envision.
I encourage you to take a second look. Sculpt OS is pretty much bare-bone. The default bootable image [1] is 27 MiB in size. With the wireless driver removed, the image weights only 16 MiB. This includes the kernel, the GUI stack, fundamental drivers (network, USB, NVMe, SATA, display, PS/2), and the software installation/update mechanism. It is specifically designed to be a suitable base for scenarios like the one you describe.
[1] https://genode.org/download/sculpt
If you find Sculpt OS not suited for your scenario, I would very much appreciate to learn why. So we can take your feedback into account for upcoming versions.
I think that I will go back now and take a better look at Sculpt as well as read up on it to get a better feel for how to use it since I was able to fire it up in a VirtualBox on my Debian 9 system as well as on native hardware, but at that time it did not seem intuitive on its usage.
As one data point, I'm using Virtualbox on Sculpt as my only OS on my laptop everyday to get all my work done. ;-)
This is very good to hear and makes me excited to look deeper into using it since I had always liked the idea of VirtualBox as the single-instance VMM.
Can you also tell me if the VBox RDP functionality is working as well since this is a critical part of infrastructure that I will need in this new type of hypervisor OS design?
During the design of Sculpt, I actually had our previous conversations (from some years ago) in the back of my head. Back then, the attempt to replicate the NOVA demo based on Genode would have required too much effort on your side. So you understandably dropped out. Given this experience, one of the major goals behind Sculpt OS was to dramatically reduce this effort - to empower people like you to pursue product ideas without getting too much sucked-in into hairy technical details.
Being able to develop this type of "product" is really what is needed for me, in particular, without getting tied down in the hairy technical details like you mention so Genode actually may be the viable solution that I have been seeking.
Should you succeed in using Sculpt OS as your base, I'd call Sculpt a success. If you give it a go and need further guidance beyond the documentation [2], you are always welcome to post here.
It would give me great pleasure also to help show that Sculpt is a resounding success towards my project and I look forward to seeing what can be done. Let me read up on it with the latest Genode documentation and see if I can compile up the NOVA + Genode + VirtualBox design.
I think that I will setup a Ubuntu 19.05 Docker container and install the Genode toolchain so that I can work on building things on my Debian host to see if that will work and take some baby steps from there.
Thanks again and have a great day, my friend. Lonnie
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Genode users mailing list users@lists.genode.org https://lists.genode.org/listinfo/users
On 4/8/20 8:34 AM, Lonnie Cumberland wrote:
Morning Norman,
[snip]
I think that I will setup a Ubuntu 19.05 Docker container and install the Genode toolchain so that I can work on building things on my Debian host to see if that will work and take some baby steps from there.
FWIW, the Genode toolchain works fine in Debian. I use Debian unstable, and haven't had a problem in years.
(Of course, you may want to use a Docker container for other reasons. I do everything in VMs, myself.)
John J . Karcher devuser@alternateapproach.com
Thanks John,
I may go ahead and give that a try. In my reading on Genode, it seemed that Ubuntu was the preferred way which is why I started looking into that direction, but if Debian also works then that is good too.
Cheers, Lonnie
On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 2:08 PM John J. Karcher < devuser@alternateapproach.com> wrote:
On 4/8/20 8:34 AM, Lonnie Cumberland wrote:
Morning Norman,
[snip]
I think that I will setup a Ubuntu 19.05 Docker container and install the Genode toolchain so that I can work on building things on my Debian host to see if that will work and take some baby steps from there.
FWIW, the Genode toolchain works fine in Debian. I use Debian unstable, and haven't had a problem in years.
(Of course, you may want to use a Docker container for other reasons. I do everything in VMs, myself.)
John J . Karcher devuser@alternateapproach.com
Genode users mailing list users@lists.genode.org https://lists.genode.org/listinfo/users
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John J. Karcher -
Lonnie Cumberland -
Norman Feske