3 ms·

So it’s like it’s own OS almost? What’s a userland?

yoavm 9y ago
Yes, it's pretty much the OS except for the kernel.
mulmen 9y ago
Userland is the part of the OS that is not the kernel. It is the part you actually interact with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_space
AYBABTME 9y ago
It's everything the kernel doesn't do. In general, that means the surface with which you interact as a user. So if you're used to using a terminal, your SSH connection, your Bash session, are all userland programs (that use kernel features to do things). You can think of it as kernel is a framework like Rails and userland stuff is developers using and expending the interfaces... sort of. When your computer runs headless, the init/process tree system is userland. Background (cron) jobs are userland, daemons are userland. Etc.
- candiodari 9y ago
  So it's a distribution ? ... that will have security issues, require updates, distribution maintenance, and all that stuff they claim is unacceptable ?
  - secure 9y ago
    It’s not a full-blown distribution; it doesn’t distribute third-party software. Instead, it allows application authors to build their own distribution (at which point “appliance” is a more fitting word than “distribution”). Updates are easy to fully automate with gokrazy (and I’ve been using that mechanism for a year at this point) because assembling a new image and installing it over the network is just one simple command. New kernel and firmware versions are provided automatically once they are verified to boot on real hardware. There is no maintenance aspect in the actual installations (i.e. you don’t need to SSH into them, ran commands to update, etc.) — the root file system is read-only, and an update overwrites it completely. Unless the applications you want to use with gokrazy introduce state, gokrazy defaults to being stateless. Hope that clarifies things, let me know if you have further questions.
    - djhworld 9y ago
      Forgive me if this sounds dumb, but if the image just contains the firmware + kernel + a light layer for managing processes, do this mean it doesn't include stuff like SSHD?
      - secure 9y ago
        That’s correct: there is no SSH daemon by default. You can optionally include https://github.com/gokrazy/breakglass https://github.com/gokrazy/breakglass, though, which is an SSH daemon that can be started on demand to facilitate interactive debugging.

Yes, it's pretty much the OS except for the kernel.

Userland is the part of the OS that is not the kernel. It is the part you actually interact with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_space

AYBABTME 9y ago

It's everything the kernel doesn't do. In general, that means the surface with which you interact as a user. So if you're used to using a terminal, your SSH connection, your Bash session, are all userland programs (that use kernel features to do things). You can think of it as kernel is a framework like Rails and userland stuff is developers using and expending the interfaces... sort of. When your computer runs headless, the init/process tree system is userland. Background (cron) jobs are userland, daemons are userland. Etc.

candiodari 9y ago
So it's a distribution ? ... that will have security issues, require updates, distribution maintenance, and all that stuff they claim is unacceptable ?
- secure 9y ago
  It’s not a full-blown distribution; it doesn’t distribute third-party software. Instead, it allows application authors to build their own distribution (at which point “appliance” is a more fitting word than “distribution”). Updates are easy to fully automate with gokrazy (and I’ve been using that mechanism for a year at this point) because assembling a new image and installing it over the network is just one simple command. New kernel and firmware versions are provided automatically once they are verified to boot on real hardware. There is no maintenance aspect in the actual installations (i.e. you don’t need to SSH into them, ran commands to update, etc.) — the root file system is read-only, and an update overwrites it completely. Unless the applications you want to use with gokrazy introduce state, gokrazy defaults to being stateless. Hope that clarifies things, let me know if you have further questions.
  - djhworld 9y ago
    Forgive me if this sounds dumb, but if the image just contains the firmware + kernel + a light layer for managing processes, do this mean it doesn't include stuff like SSHD?
    - secure 9y ago
      That’s correct: there is no SSH daemon by default. You can optionally include https://github.com/gokrazy/breakglass https://github.com/gokrazy/breakglass, though, which is an SSH daemon that can be started on demand to facilitate interactive debugging.