Talk:OS-level virtualization/Archive 1

Misc
What does UML mean here. Can someone disambiguated it? --Mjchonoles 06:07, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
 * UML (User-Mode Linux) is more a para-virtualization: a guest OS modified to be run not on top of the bare metal, but under the hypervisor (and the hypervisor is Linux in this case, which is a bit unusual). That is why I removed it: UML is in no case OS-level virtualization. --K001 17:29, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Merge with Jail (computer security)?
I suggest to merge the Jail (computer security) article into this one. They both are about the same subject. And speaking of Jails, there is a FreeBSD Jail article which tells about Jails. But the Jail (computer security) article is actually telling about OS-level virtualization.

--K001 19:57, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Agree with merge of Jail (computer security) into Operating system-level virtualization, since both articles try to summarize the entire technology class. But FreeBSD Jail should remain separate article, since it is about a specific implementation. -- Bovineone 02:42, 29 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I finally managed to merge the articles. I tried to be very accurate (and spent about an hour doing the merge), but if possible I ask you to look through the pre-merged version of Jail (computer security) and check nothing is lost. --K001 16:18, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Please no Xen, no UML here
See the previous comment why. --K001 21:20, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Note that Paravirtualization is not the same as OS-level virtualization
If you want to add Xen or User-mode Linux to this article, please don't do that. Both Xen and UML belongs to paravirtualization, which is quite a different technique. In other words, they do not belong here. --K001 11:30, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Xen is paravirtualisation, but UML is not! --Doc aberdeen 05:34, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Title
The title of this article is confusing. For example the L4 kernel does virtualisation, at the Operating System level. That technique has every right to be named "Operating System level virtualisation", but it is totally different from what this article describes. --Doc aberdeen 05:42, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

" an advanced extension of the standard chroot mechanism" ?
This seems to me to be a serious oversimplification; it's like saying a car is an advanced extension of a skateboard. In Solaris Containers, the mechanism for filesystem virtualization is radically different than chroot, and there's a heck of a lot more going on than filesystem virtualization.--NapoliRoma 15:37, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, this is indeed a serious oversimplification, but still a chroot was a precursor to the modern containers technology, like a horse "powered" vehicle was a precursor to the modern car. --K001 (talk) 22:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

add KVM?
can someone please add linux kvm to the table? thanks a lot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mator (talk • contribs) 09:14, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

KVM is not system level virtualization. One must provide a kernel for the guest to use. This is not the case with system level virtualization. Das - Sun Oct 11 21:46:37 UTC 2009

Someone please fix
I've noticed someone made an erroneous edit: the last two rows of the chart make absolutely no sense. Someone please fix and say it's been fixed below this comment. ~Ninjagecko

''Deleted. --DavidHopwood 23:28, 20 July 2007 (UTC)''

--> Fixed the table and removed Xen from the table as it is Paravirtualisation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.217.23.206 (talk) 19:28, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Error in UML
"or paravirtualizers (such as Xen and UML)."

User Mode Linux is not a paravirtualization technology. Two levels: one and two in operating system-level virtualization. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.156.251.18 (talk) 10:43, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Linux containers
Needs added info and reference to linux containers http://lxc.sourceforge.net —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.212.36.65 (talk) 08:48, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

After surfing for info on OpenVZ, VServer etc came to this page, expected to see LXC information as well. Could someone with knowledge of it please add another row. Thanks 78.148.70.1 (talk) 14:35, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Notes 4 is obsolete. You can remove CAP_SYS_ADMIN using lxc.cap.drop=sys_admin See http://kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/pages/man7/capabilities.7.html and http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=28284725 -- Picolobo (talk) 11:45, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Why the ndash (–) in the title of the page?
I wonder why an ndash (long dash, –) has been used in the title of this page (currently "Operating system–level virtualization")? What is the explanation? It looks strange to me to have an ndash there.

According to Manual of Style: Hyphens, I believe a hyphen should be used there. And more specifically, Manual of Style: Instead of a hyphen, when applying a prefix (but not a suffix) to a compound that includes a space says that "credit card–sized" is wrong (it should be "credit card-sized").

But maybe there is an exception somewhere I haven't seen?

--Jhertel (talk) 13:48, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Hello! Please have a look at a detailed discussion that addresses suffixed compound adjectives much further while slightly confronting with that MOS section; while you're there, it might be worth to also have a look at a related discussion.  By the way, in case you haven't looked at the Manual of Style (MOS) discussions before, you'll be discovering a whole new world of its own. :)  Here's another related MoS discussion –  also a lengthy one, of course. :)
 * In a few words, that's one of the few areas in MOS that don't make sense, and proponents of changes pretty much lost their motivation when confronted with a few MOS regulars, which pretty much remain in "bubbles" established by printed style guides. &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 14:09, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Oh. My. God! :-O That's a discussion I simply do not have the energy to take part in. :-) Thank you so much for the references!
 * I am happy that here in Denmark we have government employed professionals to take all those discussions internally regarding the Danish language. They also follow the actual language use in the media, of course. Then they just release a set of official rules/guidings for everyone to follow (if they want), and those rules almost always make very good sense, as those in the agency are very intelligent and knowledgable people.
 * As a side note, in Denmark, the hyphenation rule from that governmental agency would say the title of this article should be written "Operating system-level virtualization" if it was Danish (which of course it is not), and I personally think that is fine.
 * And as a side note to that side note, the Danish translation could actually be operativsystemniveauvirtualisering without any hyphens or spaces, but that is a completely different story ;-). --Jhertel (talk) 18:13, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Hehe, you're right, those are quite lengthy discussions involving multiple subthreads and even forks that go into separate directions, partially merging back together... It's probably no wonder that the proponents of changes went out of steam relatively quickly. :)
 * Having a governing body to regulate a language should be a good thing as it simply takes away all the doubt and keeps a language uniform and consistently used all around. Languages inevitably change over time, and, if left unregulated, that provides potential for the development of a messy situation.  As a side note, in my native language (which isn't English) things are pretty much different –  there is some kind of a governing body, but I'm unaware of any updates they should've released in the last ten years or so. :)
 * Oh, and those really-lenghty-and-seemingly-never-hyphenated compound words in Germanic languages always put a smile on my face. :) &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 22:47, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Of course, all that is just my humble opinion, nothing more. &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 14:24, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your humble opinion! --Jhertel (talk) 18:13, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * You're welcome. :) &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 22:47, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * That en dash here is counter to the advice of our MOS. It would be much more clear to readers how to parse this complicated compound if it were set with hyphens as in this book and this book and this book.  The MOS recommends the en dash for prefixes before multi-word compounds; but not for suffixes, which is a uniquely American and hard-to-parse style.  The move, by the way, was made without discussion by Dsimic, here.  I will fix. Dicklyon (talk) 04:05, 6 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Hey ! Well, I must admit that the rename to "operating-system-level virtualization" looks really awkward.  Perhaps "operating system–level virtualization" isn't by the "we live in the bubbles of printed manuals of style" books, but "operating-system-level virtualization" is just awkward.  Ugh. :(  Just my humble opinion, of course. &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 04:16, 6 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Not sure why it seems awkward to you. It's the way I would write it, since the single hyphen or en dash looks so awkard to me.  Dicklyon (talk) 04:27, 6 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry for sounding unnecessarily harsh. Well, guess I shouldn't care about it that much and simply become used to it after some time. &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 04:29, 6 January 2015 (UTC)


 * No worries, didn't sound harsh. Dicklyon (talk) 04:43, 6 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks. At the same time, "operating-system-level virtualization" might have already grown upon me. :) &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 04:53, 6 January 2015 (UTC)


 * "Virtualization at the operating-system level" would be easy to parse, perfectly descriptive and avoids the whole messy issue. SteveBaker (talk) 06:03, 25 June 2015 (UTC)


 * That's an option for sure, but IMHO it's somewhat too wordy and wouldn't fit very well as an article title. &mdash; Dsimic (talk &#124; contribs) 06:19, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

website explaining containers
this seems to be a good in-depth description of containers and how they work on linux. Maybe it can be added as weblink. --212.101.32.185 (talk) 16:19, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

add systemd-nspawn
please someone could add systemd-nspawn to the table — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amokk.zgz (talk • contribs) 21:07, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

windows containers
The article redirects containers to here, but I cannot find windows containers in the comparison/table; I assume it should be there, right? or is it a different technology?--Uwe a (talk) 13:25, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * What are article and what redirect are you talking about?
 * In addition, the type of Windows Containers is Docker, which is listed in the table.
 * Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 04:23, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * , The redirect must have been Container Virtualization, and the virtualization capability in windows is (in this context) operating system level, maybe its part of hypervisor, Docker (AFAIU); based on its page here "provides an additional layer of abstraction and automation" of os-level virtualization/containers (i.e. cgroups in linux, and I assume LXC utilizes that as well and is a manifestation of non-docker on linux, both utilizing that part which is on the os level:cgroups); what is the OS level "thing" in windows that docker (for example) utilizes, by now I'm quit sure there is two technologies that can be utilized (one of them at least is "native" part of the MS windows OS); and should be comparable with cgroups, jail, solaris containers... but what is it (this is what got me to this page in the first place)?--Uwe a (talk) 21:43, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I am afraid you are not making any sense to me. Let's hope another person can answer you.
 * Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 07:03, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Windows Subsystem for Linux
Add Windows Subsystem for Linux? Algotr (talk) 23:50, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Hello. :)
 * Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Microsoft has stated on several occasions that WSL is not based on virtualization or containerization. The WSL article also calls it a compatibility layer.
 * Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 09:00, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Weird page name

 * En Dashes Clarify Compound Phrasal Adjectives

But when the first of the two terms in the temporary compound is itself a compound, the greater suspensive strength of the en dash is employed, as in "She wears jam jar–bottom glasses" or "The character's origins go all the way back to the golden egg–laying magic goose."

Alternately, these sentences can be styled with hyphens between the three words in each phrasal adjective, as in "She wears jam-jar-bottom glasses" and "The character's origins go all the way back to the golden-egg-laying magic goose." This style is used when en dashes are discouraged or not an option, ...

This whole mess could be finessed by naming the page OS-level virtualization (parsing 'virtualization' >>> parsing 'OS').

But then I see a comment above that OS is walking into a corner, and maybe 'container' should be the head concept instead.

For my own notes, I decided on shared-kernel virtualization (or perhaps shared-kernel isolation). In the jails model, there isn't all that much virtualization in the base configuration, and mainly only the network stack in the advanced configuration.

By 'kernel' I actually mean (shared (kernel (process tree))). But it's confusing for a non-LISP person to spell that out.

Now that I think about it, SKI is looking pretty good to demarcate the alternate-plumbing bathroom door beside the one labelled KVM. &mdash; MaxEnt 20:53, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Add information about HP-UX Containers/SRPs
HP-UX Containers (formerly known as Secure Resource Partitions) https://h20392.www2.hpe.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=HP-UX-SRP are the HP-UX OS-level virtualization technology and the counterpart to Solaris zones and AIX WPARs (Workload Partitions). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.203.176.133 (talk) 14:09, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 5 February 2019

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: move the page to Container (virtualization) at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 03:06, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Operating-system-level virtualization → Container (computing) – "Container" is the more common term today and is more "intuitively understandable" than "operating system–level virtualization". Qzekrom (talk) 02:19, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

This comment came with the template. Original discussion below this line &darr;

I propose to rename the page to "Containers" or "Containers technology" or "Containerization" or something similar. The thing is, "Operating system-level virtualization" is quite long, complex and not definitive. Containers, on the other hand, is intuitively understandable. --K001 (talk) 22:27, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Or Jails due FreeBSD started this on 2000 and SUN containers was implemented on 2005. Is good as is "Operating system-level virtualization" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.106.50.48 (talk) 09:31, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

→ → → Giving this a Bump....Would be good to rename, especially given the increased container notoriety within the entire industry - not just admins (TY Docker, Rkt, Mesos, Kub, etc) which is leading to significant confusion associated with full virtualization (VMWare/Hyper-V). DanSpurling (talk) 16:10, 13 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree with this. "Container" seems to be the most popular name for this technology by far. Qzekrom (talk) 02:12, 5 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Move over Container (virtualization), which redirects to it. The proposed title fails WP:PRECISE: we have Container (computer science) as a redirect to Container (abstract data type), which also has redirects Container class, Container object, and Container (programming). There is also Container Linux.  94.21.238.64 (talk) 05:21, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Good catch, anon. I prefer that. Qzekrom (talk) 23:07, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Use "Container (virtualization)" per the above discussion, which captured the objection I was going to make, myself, to "Container (computing)"; a disambiguation that just creates another ambiguity is a failure. However, the "(virtualization)" disambig seems WP:PRECISE enough for our purposes. I agree with nom that the current name is absurd; it's a total WP:COMMONNAME and WP:RECOGNIZABLE failure. Virtually no one is going to use the phrase "operating-system-level virtualization" to look for this topic, however accurate it may be as a descriptive definition (and I'm not entirely sure it really is accurate).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:43, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Definition of container
While researching for this article, I've noticed different definitions of container depending on what aspects of the technology the authors want to stress. For example, Docker defines a container as "a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies so the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another", while this article (before I rewrote the lead) defined a container as an instance of a virtual userspace created thru OS-level virtualization. Since Docker is the most widespread container framework, the lead should give due weight to their definition (which stresses portability). Qzekrom 💬 theythem 18:24, 3 March 2019 (UTC)