IncludeOS – Run your application with zero overhead

https://www.includeos.org/

by turrini • 5 years ago

96 10 5 years ago

tshanmu• 5 years ago

How would includeos work with the Amazon specific network hardware or does something like firecracker abstract the network stack fully? Where do the network drivers live?

ncmncm• 5 years ago

I don't really know much specific about Amazon.

But any network drivers you need are linked, or compiled, right into your program, instead of in a kernel you run on top of. If Amazon is providing a virtualized NIC, you compile in drivers for that under the IP stack you have also compiled in. Amazon's hypervisor might proxy access to actual or synthetic network devices, or might map a real NIC into your VM, or they might even boot your program on a real machine with real NIC, for all the world as if it is booting a proper kernel.

It really is as if your app is your kernel, which just doesn't bother with any sort of user programs, because your code is all right there. Instead of doing system calls, it just does regular function calls to what would have been kernel services.

Because it is all just one program, you can inline a lot of stuff that would normally have a system call or module indirection interposed. This would be a good place for LTO, to inline everything that could benefit by it.

smackeyacky• 5 years ago

So its like a lambda that doesnt have the run time limits Amazon impose? I kinda like the idea (I like the AWS lambdas for short running tasks triggered by events) but if you want what is effectively a long running lambda, then a container is really the next logical step. I guess there is room between a lambda and a container but not much room.

esjeon• 5 years ago

I think the title and the main page are really bad at explaining what IncludeOS actually is. The author probably is trying to impress readers too much.

The thing is, this is something called “unikernel[1]”, which basically can be linked directly into your application. With this, you just boot into your application instead of general-purpose OS like Linux. IIRC, it’s even possible to this on top of another OS. This comes with a lot of benefits, but with a lot of caveats, too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unikernel

ksec• 5 years ago

Or the link on the page [Tell me more] [1],

IncludeOS is an operating system written as a library. When building an application, the build system includes the code that would typically reside in your operating system into the application itself. When it is done building a bootloader is added. So, after a successful build, you now have a standalone application that boots without an operating system. The application is now capable of driving the hardware, it has an IP stack and manages its memory.
Unlike more traditional operating systems IncludeOS is meant for single task computers. There is only a single application running. For multiple security domains, we require multiple machines, and we leave the separation task to the hypervisor.

They could have just called it Cloud-DOS.

[1]https://www.includeos.org/technology.html

johannes1234321• 5 years ago

How well is the project doing? - They had big plans, but it seems the company behind it shut down sometime ago. Lat blog from two years ago, last commit a year ago.

softblush• 5 years ago

It's dead in the water. See also this comment when this project came up the last time on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21905955

https://github.com/includeos/IncludeOS/issues/2211

https://github.com/includeos/IncludeOS/issues/2183

https://twitter.com/perbu/status/1215931242593554434?s=19

elzbardico• 5 years ago

Unfortunately this project is dead.

halation_effect• 5 years ago

I recommend Unikraft[1][2][3] as an alternative. It is under active development.

[1] https://unikraft.org/

[2] https://github.com/unikra ft/unikraft

[3] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3447786.3456248

IncludeOS – Run your application with zero overhead

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