5 ms·

OmniOS: Illumos-based OS from OmniTI

66 points by vgnet 15y ago

cwp 15y ago
I'm not to familiar with the Illumos world. Would this be the equivalent of a new Linux distribution?
- petedoyle 15y ago
  Yes, I think so, except its the equivalent of a new Solaris/OpenSolaris distribution (from which Illumos derives).
  - rollypolly 15y ago
    That's very ambitious. Do you know who they're targeting with this? Legacy systems perhaps?
    - nosequel 15y ago
      Honestly, more and more people with big data problems are turning back to solaris kernels over linux because of how many issues there are with linux when you are really running it hard. ZFS, dtrace, and the Solaris kernel on new hardware is really a compelling argument over Linux.
      - justauser 15y ago
        I hate to be the one asking for a citation but can you share some examples of "more people" who have moved from Linux back to Solaris? I agree about excellence of Dtrace and ZFS but I'm just curious about your kernel comment.
    - X-Istence 15y ago
      The opposite actually, the newer KVM stuff for example will not run on older processors, Intel Core iX and very new model Xeon's are required with EPT support. Many people, my self included, are using Solaris mainly for big storage where the safety of data comes first and foremost. There is still not good competitor to ZFS that works as well and provides the same gaurantees.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
petedoyle 15y ago
I gotta say, ZFS+KVM sure seems like an awesome combo. Any ideas how this is different than SmartOS?
- patrickgzill 15y ago
  The SmartOS ISO I downloaded, did not have an installer to help you install the OS to disk. This one does, according to release notes. Looks like they have tweaked some of the libraries and they provide both 32 and 64bit versions of Python also (this can be a pain to build sometimes as the configure tools don't always pull in the right libs, so you end up with mixed 32 and 64bit objects or other weirdness). Also, the installer is minimal, basically just asks you what disk to install on. You do all other configuration after you have booted it for the first time.
  - dmpk2k 15y ago
    Just to be clear to any readers: SmartOS is not meant to be installed on disk, ergo no installer.
justauser 15y ago
My understanding of hardware support from SmartOS and Illumos was that it only worked on Intel hardware and not AMD. Is this still the case? Relevant to this discussion : Joyent releasing SmartOS http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2887170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2887170 AMD support from SmartOS wiki: http://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Technical+FAQs#SmartOSTechnicalFAQs-WhataboutAMDsupport%3F http://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Technical+FAQs#S...
- wmf 15y ago
  Given the size of the community, it's likely that Illumos will support less and less hardware over time. You may want to stick to whatever's on the Nexenta compatibility list.
  - bdha 15y ago
    Nexenta is based on illumos now. They just published their gate on GitHub. Presumably we'll be seeing pull requests from them. :-)
- jdboyd 15y ago
  Most things work on AMD64. In SmartOS, KVM was the major feature that didn't work on AMD64, but as they said in the faq, the community has been working on that. I can't currently find the testing ISO builds with that support, but here is at least one repo with KVM on AMD support: https://github.com/jclulow/illumos-kvm https://github.com/jclulow/illumos-kvm Joyent's original work is worse than just Intel only, it requires features found in Core iX and relate Xeon CPUs. This means it doesn't work on Xeon 5xxx chips that are getting affordable and it doesn't work on C2D chips that support VT-x. It sounds like AMD support is further along than supporting older Intel chips.
  - jclulow 15y ago
    That's my repo! The "pre-ept" branch contains experimental support for both AMD CPUs with AMD-V support, and Intel CPUs lacking the EPT feature (Joyent targeted EPT support with their initial port.) I have a hacked up SmartOS ISO from a month ago with a build of the "pre-ept" KVM module replacing the stock module. If you'd like to test it out, with the disclaimer that it might not work for you, it's here: http://alpha.sysmgr.org/smartos-20120223-jmc2.iso http://alpha.sysmgr.org/smartos-20120223-jmc2.iso If it works for you I'd love to hear about it. If it doesn't work and you can provide crash dumps or even remote console access to the machine for me to debug the problem then I'll try and help out. My goal is to get the new support tested and working on as many different bits of hardware as possible and then get it integrated into Joyent's repo once cleaned up and proven. A lot of us hang out in #illumos on freenode (IRC) if you'd like to chat -- I'm LeftWing.
hapless 15y ago
So we are now nested, what, six deep in forks? I've long since lost track: OpenSolaris => OpenIndiana => Illumos => this new thing ? are there some in-between steps? And we don't have 100% solaris api/abi compatibility. Or a Sun compiler. Or Sun drivers, necessarily. Or a real guarantee of future source releases from Oracle. Who/what is this for?
- patrickgzill 15y ago
  Who is it for? My view: People who want to run ZFS for storage usage. ZFS is still better than Linux alternatives like LVM, BTRFS etc. To be picky, there is not an exact counterpart to ZFS under Linux. And with clones etc. you can set up 1 master KVM image and then clone it 10 or 100 times, saving a lot of disk space in the process (ZFS clones only use the amount of space that is different from the original). People who have a lot of Solaris experience or have to maintain a lot of Solaris systems already. Also people who are using Solaris zones. People who are building backend systems that require or can use any/all of the above. Right now, no one cares what your Web SaaS service runs on, as long as it stays up and doesn't lose their data. Solaris still has a better VM subsystem, IMHO, than Linux does, and performs very well under heavy loads that include disk activity.
  - wmf 15y ago
    You've explained who Solaris is for, but if you want Solaris why would you want to run a fork of a fork of Solaris? It's still not clear what value this adds relative to Illumos.
    - patrickgzill 15y ago
      For one, KVM virtualization does not run on Illumos, nor Solaris. Second, Oracle is encumbering Solaris with a not-nice license. I haven't followed the latest developments because I no longer care, since I will never use a non-free OS. Whether you meant to ask, "Why Illumos over Solaris" or "Why SmartOS or OmniOS over Illumos?" I think I have answered your question :-)
stefanve 15y ago
I would love to have a special laptop edition of a OS like this. Some nice features: A nice VM overview/start/manage screen A way to group VM's so it starts multiple VM's with a single "click" (in a pre defined order). Switching between VM's with a shortcut and/or alt-tab/expose visual style. Host menu to openen up new VM's, looking at stats etc. maybe a fold down over the current VM
mkup 15y ago
Can anyone elaborate: why all these cloud webhosting people are taking legal risks of Oracle changing license for (Open)Solaris or closing this OS project entirely, legal risks of being sued by Oracle for patent infrigement / whatever else legal bullshit? They could just port KVM to FreeBSD instead; FreeBSD already has ZFS, DTrace and all other necessary bells and whistles for cloud webhosting infrastructure. But in contrast to (Open)Solaris they have community support for new hardware, a lot of already working drivers for existing hardware and also much safer legal position. Are there any technical difficulties with porting KVM to FreeBSD? Can anyone elaborate?
- justauser 15y ago
  FreeBSD will have it's own native type 2 hypervisor soon, BHyVe. http://wiki.freebsd.org/BHyVe http://wiki.freebsd.org/BHyVe
- bdha 15y ago
  As I said above, OpenSolaris is dead. illumos is a fork. We don't take code from Oracle, because there isn't any. If they'd kept the gate open, a fork probably wouldn't have happened. As for why not to just move from Solaris to FreeBSD... because they're totally different beasts? And we happen to like Solaris? :-) Porting KVM to Solaris was apparently quite non-trivial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwAfJywzk8o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwAfJywzk8o

66 points by vgnet 15y ago

cwp 15y ago

I'm not to familiar with the Illumos world. Would this be the equivalent of a new Linux distribution?

petedoyle 15y ago
Yes, I think so, except its the equivalent of a new Solaris/OpenSolaris distribution (from which Illumos derives).
- rollypolly 15y ago
  That's very ambitious. Do you know who they're targeting with this? Legacy systems perhaps?
  - nosequel 15y ago
    Honestly, more and more people with big data problems are turning back to solaris kernels over linux because of how many issues there are with linux when you are really running it hard. ZFS, dtrace, and the Solaris kernel on new hardware is really a compelling argument over Linux.
    - justauser 15y ago
      I hate to be the one asking for a citation but can you share some examples of "more people" who have moved from Linux back to Solaris? I agree about excellence of Dtrace and ZFS but I'm just curious about your kernel comment.
  - X-Istence 15y ago
    The opposite actually, the newer KVM stuff for example will not run on older processors, Intel Core iX and very new model Xeon's are required with EPT support. Many people, my self included, are using Solaris mainly for big storage where the safety of data comes first and foremost. There is still not good competitor to ZFS that works as well and provides the same gaurantees.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

petedoyle 15y ago

I gotta say, ZFS+KVM sure seems like an awesome combo. Any ideas how this is different than SmartOS?

patrickgzill 15y ago
The SmartOS ISO I downloaded, did not have an installer to help you install the OS to disk. This one does, according to release notes. Looks like they have tweaked some of the libraries and they provide both 32 and 64bit versions of Python also (this can be a pain to build sometimes as the configure tools don't always pull in the right libs, so you end up with mixed 32 and 64bit objects or other weirdness). Also, the installer is minimal, basically just asks you what disk to install on. You do all other configuration after you have booted it for the first time.
- dmpk2k 15y ago
  Just to be clear to any readers: SmartOS is not meant to be installed on disk, ergo no installer.

justauser 15y ago

My understanding of hardware support from SmartOS and Illumos was that it only worked on Intel hardware and not AMD. Is this still the case? Relevant to this discussion : Joyent releasing SmartOS http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2887170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2887170 AMD support from SmartOS wiki: http://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Technical+FAQs#SmartOSTechnicalFAQs-WhataboutAMDsupport%3F http://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Technical+FAQs#S...

wmf 15y ago
Given the size of the community, it's likely that Illumos will support less and less hardware over time. You may want to stick to whatever's on the Nexenta compatibility list.
- bdha 15y ago
  Nexenta is based on illumos now. They just published their gate on GitHub. Presumably we'll be seeing pull requests from them. :-)
jdboyd 15y ago
Most things work on AMD64. In SmartOS, KVM was the major feature that didn't work on AMD64, but as they said in the faq, the community has been working on that. I can't currently find the testing ISO builds with that support, but here is at least one repo with KVM on AMD support: https://github.com/jclulow/illumos-kvm https://github.com/jclulow/illumos-kvm Joyent's original work is worse than just Intel only, it requires features found in Core iX and relate Xeon CPUs. This means it doesn't work on Xeon 5xxx chips that are getting affordable and it doesn't work on C2D chips that support VT-x. It sounds like AMD support is further along than supporting older Intel chips.
- jclulow 15y ago
  That's my repo! The "pre-ept" branch contains experimental support for both AMD CPUs with AMD-V support, and Intel CPUs lacking the EPT feature (Joyent targeted EPT support with their initial port.) I have a hacked up SmartOS ISO from a month ago with a build of the "pre-ept" KVM module replacing the stock module. If you'd like to test it out, with the disclaimer that it might not work for you, it's here: http://alpha.sysmgr.org/smartos-20120223-jmc2.iso http://alpha.sysmgr.org/smartos-20120223-jmc2.iso If it works for you I'd love to hear about it. If it doesn't work and you can provide crash dumps or even remote console access to the machine for me to debug the problem then I'll try and help out. My goal is to get the new support tested and working on as many different bits of hardware as possible and then get it integrated into Joyent's repo once cleaned up and proven. A lot of us hang out in #illumos on freenode (IRC) if you'd like to chat -- I'm LeftWing.

hapless 15y ago

So we are now nested, what, six deep in forks? I've long since lost track: OpenSolaris => OpenIndiana => Illumos => this new thing ? are there some in-between steps? And we don't have 100% solaris api/abi compatibility. Or a Sun compiler. Or Sun drivers, necessarily. Or a real guarantee of future source releases from Oracle. Who/what is this for?

patrickgzill 15y ago
Who is it for? My view: People who want to run ZFS for storage usage. ZFS is still better than Linux alternatives like LVM, BTRFS etc. To be picky, there is not an exact counterpart to ZFS under Linux. And with clones etc. you can set up 1 master KVM image and then clone it 10 or 100 times, saving a lot of disk space in the process (ZFS clones only use the amount of space that is different from the original). People who have a lot of Solaris experience or have to maintain a lot of Solaris systems already. Also people who are using Solaris zones. People who are building backend systems that require or can use any/all of the above. Right now, no one cares what your Web SaaS service runs on, as long as it stays up and doesn't lose their data. Solaris still has a better VM subsystem, IMHO, than Linux does, and performs very well under heavy loads that include disk activity.
- wmf 15y ago
  You've explained who Solaris is for, but if you want Solaris why would you want to run a fork of a fork of Solaris? It's still not clear what value this adds relative to Illumos.
  - patrickgzill 15y ago
    For one, KVM virtualization does not run on Illumos, nor Solaris. Second, Oracle is encumbering Solaris with a not-nice license. I haven't followed the latest developments because I no longer care, since I will never use a non-free OS. Whether you meant to ask, "Why Illumos over Solaris" or "Why SmartOS or OmniOS over Illumos?" I think I have answered your question :-)

stefanve 15y ago

I would love to have a special laptop edition of a OS like this. Some nice features: A nice VM overview/start/manage screen A way to group VM's so it starts multiple VM's with a single "click" (in a pre defined order). Switching between VM's with a shortcut and/or alt-tab/expose visual style. Host menu to openen up new VM's, looking at stats etc. maybe a fold down over the current VM

mkup 15y ago

Can anyone elaborate: why all these cloud webhosting people are taking legal risks of Oracle changing license for (Open)Solaris or closing this OS project entirely, legal risks of being sued by Oracle for patent infrigement / whatever else legal bullshit? They could just port KVM to FreeBSD instead; FreeBSD already has ZFS, DTrace and all other necessary bells and whistles for cloud webhosting infrastructure. But in contrast to (Open)Solaris they have community support for new hardware, a lot of already working drivers for existing hardware and also much safer legal position. Are there any technical difficulties with porting KVM to FreeBSD? Can anyone elaborate?

justauser 15y ago
FreeBSD will have it's own native type 2 hypervisor soon, BHyVe. http://wiki.freebsd.org/BHyVe http://wiki.freebsd.org/BHyVe
bdha 15y ago
As I said above, OpenSolaris is dead. illumos is a fork. We don't take code from Oracle, because there isn't any. If they'd kept the gate open, a fork probably wouldn't have happened. As for why not to just move from Solaris to FreeBSD... because they're totally different beasts? And we happen to like Solaris? :-) Porting KVM to Solaris was apparently quite non-trivial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwAfJywzk8o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwAfJywzk8o