IncludeOS: Run your C++ code directly on virtual hardware

http://www.includeos.org/

by ingve • 11 years ago

97 38 11 years ago

Is this even a thing when we have container boom? Any advantage of running a virtualization layer just to run a C++ application, why not run it in a container?

vezzy-fnord3• 11 years ago

Where the container virtualizes an instance of an operating system, the libOS (related: the unikernel and exokernel) goes further into virtualizing the operating system services and interfaces themselves. It's a logical step further.

phire• 11 years ago

One advantage is that the application gets full control over the page tables. At least one program I work on would gain huge advantages in that kind of environment.

josteink• 11 years ago

Are we just inventing new stuff which will make our code harder to debug for the sake of making something "new" at this point, or am I just being overly cynical?

vezzy-fnord3• 11 years ago

This idea isn't new at all. In fact, it's largely a conceptual throwback to the days before even batch schedulers where programs had to initialize the machine they were running on. The modern libOS dates from MIT research in exokernels during the 90s, itself an incremental step further of the numerous microkernel projects like SPIN, V-System, Mach, Amoeba and so forth.

It's a 1950s idea updated to 21st century standards using 1970s dynamic linking, sometimes but not necessarily meant to be run under a hypervisor.

rewqfdsa• 11 years ago

Well, hypervisors and OS kernels are largely mirrors of each other, and it doesn't make architecturally to have both. Some people, like the creator of this project, favor squeezing out the OS kernel. Other people, like the LXC people, prefer squeezing out hypervisors and letting OS kernels do it all. Both suck. All software sucks. Software is hell. Every moment is a living nightmare of pain.

billconan• 11 years ago

good to see a unikernel for c++

henriknj• 11 years ago

we haven't really seen anything yet.. no code, paper or whatsoever, not sure what to expect

FraaJad2• 11 years ago

check out http://osv.io

bluejekyll• 11 years ago

I'd love to see some consolidated efforts here. I'm currently looking at rumprun but need to support Java and at least I haven't found anyone who's done that successfully. So now I'm also looking at OSv which looks like it's trying to be compatible with Docker.

anttiok2• 11 years ago

Do you know anyone who's even tried to make Java work on Rumprun? I only tried Python, that worked out of the box. From what I've been following others, e.g. Erlang, Rust and Javascript (node.js) more or less provided the same experience.

peeyek• 11 years ago

A minimal, service oriented, includeable library operating system for cloud services

I think the operating system for cloud services is need to be able to run heterogeneous system. Which Mesos & CoreOS are headed towards this idea via containerization.

Why build an OS that only run a C++ for cloud services? Is there any use case/problems that the author trying to solve?

ZenoArrow• 11 years ago

What I want to know is how this is better/different compared to Rumprun or OSv. They appear to be its closest competitors.

https://github.com/rumpkernel/rumprun/

http://osv.io/

tinco• 11 years ago

It is generally assumed virtual machines have better isolation (security-wise) than operating system level isolation like the containerization Mesos and CoreOS are making use of.

Leon• 11 years ago

CoreOS and SELinux together is pretty secure if set up properly; even if you broke out of a container you wouldn't be able to do anything, even start a process. But still, yeah, in a unikernel there is no 'breaking out' at all.

nv-vn• 11 years ago

What is the advantage of this over running a unikernels in Xen?

bjackman• 11 years ago

This is the only unikernel I know of that supports "raw" applications - OSv applications run in a JVM and MirageOS applications are in OCaml.

Edit: looks like there's a direct alternative called Rumprun: https://github.com/rumpkernel/rumprun. I hadn't heard of it.

Anyway, right now this whole unikernel thing is still pretty new so it's good to have multiple projects.

smithclay• 11 years ago

There's also a JavaScript unikernel project: http://runtimejs.org/

anttiok2• 11 years ago

Notably, there's ongoing work (with an already functional result) to run Mirage on top of the low-level drivers provided by Rumprun. The idea in doing that is enabling the "top-level" Mirage stack to run in environments for which they don't have native OCaml drivers yet. (disclaimer: I don't speak for Mirage, though I do speak for Rumprun)

narrowrail• 11 years ago

OSv applications run in a JVM

While this may be the most typical use for OSv, my understanding from their wiki[0] is that OSv can handle Ruby or Node, or Linux apps (most of the Linux ABI is supported).

[0]https://github.com/cloudius-systems/osv/wiki

voltagex_• 11 years ago

Could I port Python to this and then run a Flask app directly under Xen?

FraaJad2• 11 years ago

You should be looking at Rump kernels for this, specifically https://github.com/rumpkernel/rumprun-packages/tree/master/p... directory.

rmrfrmrf• 11 years ago

Is the assumption here that scheduling, drivers, resource management etc. will all be on par with or better than full-fledged operating systems? Seems like what you might gain in being closer to the metal could easily be lost by wheels that have already been invented.

nostrademons3• 11 years ago

I suspect it's that you won't need most of them in a typical application.

The idea behind unikernels is that now that we have pervasive virtualization, most virtual machines are running only a single application anyway. So you have an instance type for memcached, one for postgres, one for Node, one for nginx, one for Redis, one for your JVM, etc. In many cases, these apps already include user-level scheduling and resource management, which often works at cross purposes with the OS. In other cases, they could run much faster if they implemented these specialized to their particular workload, and didn't need to run through an OS scheduler that also needs to support responsive desktop apps.

sillysaurus32• 11 years ago

The reason this is a bad idea is because it restricts your ability to redesign a system. If you want to add another program, you can't do it by definition.

Though I suppose the solution in that scenario is "Take it out of the unikernel, then."

Still, if you rip out the fundamental abstractions of an OS, how would you run an application that relies on e.g. fork? Or any application that runs a shell command in any way?

My understanding is probably falling short. I should read up more on unikernels.

jandrewrogers• 11 years ago

Bypassing the operating system and implementing this functionality in user space is already common practice in high-performance server software. From the perspective of a specific server workload, it is pretty easy to design purpose-built schedulers and resource managers that will greatly outperform the ones in your operating system. There is much room to invent better wheels. I presume this software is designed to make that easier, since there are fewer operating system quirks to work around.

Obviously this is not suitable for every programmer (e.g. if you have difficulty designing software that does not leak memory, this is not for you) but there is a subset that can design correct schedulers and robust resource managers in their sleep. The integer factor improvements in system throughput make it a worthwhile optimization if you know how to do it.

GPGPU• 11 years ago

We've been doing a similar thing with Erlang -- running it without an OS using Ling to run Erlang on Xen

See http://erlangonxen.org

(And see the demo here: http://zerg.erlangonxen.org )

abrookewood• 11 years ago

I've been following erlangonxen for a while, but things seem to be quiet. What are you guys working on? Any news?

mempko• 11 years ago

I just pooped my pants. How excite!

AnbeSivam• 11 years ago

Hope it gets built for cross platform. I wish this could be run on top of smartos zones, instead of kvm or xen. http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2013/01/11/virtualization-pe...

smartos zones also has a linux compatibilty layer ( lx branded zones ).

IncludeOS: Run your C++ code directly on virtual hardware

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