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Can someone comment on the state of Docker on FreeBSD? I know I can have jails but what about Docker?

• soupbowl 9y ago
  From my experience and reading online, most people suggest spinning up a small Linux vm in bhyve and running docker from it instead of through FreeBSD.
• xenophonf 9y ago
  It's still experimental: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker Using FreeBSD as the Docker host requires the Linux compatibility layer, like Windows and macOS.
  • vertex-four 9y ago
    Windows and macOS literally spin up VMs for Docker - the compat layer in FreeBSD runs binaries natively, just translating syscalls in the kernel.
    • eatonphil 9y ago
      They used to. The native version has been in beta for a while and it's fairly stable. I've used it locally for about a year. https://thenewstack.io/native-docker-comes-windows-mac/ https://thenewstack.io/native-docker-comes-windows-mac/
      • vertex-four 9y ago
        No, that literally says they use VMs - they just internally manage them.
        • eatonphil 9y ago
          Whoops, you're right. They switched from VirtualBox to xhyve on macOS but it's still a VM.
• X86BSD 9y ago
  You might also be interested in something better like Project FIFO[1]. [1] http://project-fifo.net http://project-fifo.net
  • shiftoutbox 9y ago
    Yes Heinz has added support for FreeBSD to Fifo and it works. Having setup a fairly large fifo setup . I can say its not as painful as Openstack or Vmware.
• takeda 9y ago
  Docker is flawed in a way that by definition it expects to run Linux code. If you run docker on Mac or Windows it actually starts it in a VM. So with these requirements you can't run it on anything but Linux. FreeBSD actually has compatibility mode and can run Linux binaries, but why would I want that instead of running a native code?
  • bauerd 9y ago
    Because I like FreeBSD and if the kernel's compat layer got the job done, why not?
    • takeda 9y ago
      Well I mean you can run it, I was not even aware there is some effort[1] to run it. What I was trying to say is that in my opinion this is one of inherent flaws in Docker and I think docker is really a dead end (I'm not talking about dead end of containerization, but just this kind of approach). What people actually expect from containerization is essentially what Kubernetes is currently providing (quickly spinning new instances of processes, autoscaling, load balancing, rolling updates etc), but I already see questioning why docker is even needed at that point when really cgroups are used to restrict resources and processes already provide enough isolation. [1] https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker