8 ms·

Docker, the Linux container runtime: now open-source

403 points by shykes 14y ago

dnerdy 14y ago
I'm glad to see work in the area of making linux containers more accessible. I recently stumbled upon openruko[1], an open source Heroku clone, and from there discovered linux containers and lxc[2]. It takes a bit of configuration to set up useful containers, though. I think the ideas behind Heroku and The Twelve-Factor App[3] are good, and containers are an important building block. I'm excited to see (and I'd like to see more) tools like Docker that aid in robust and streamlined container-based deployments in-house. [1] https://github.com/openruko https://github.com/openruko [2] http://lxc.sourceforge.net/ http://lxc.sourceforge.net/ [3] http://www.12factor.net/ http://www.12factor.net/
- darkarmani 14y ago
  I've been making heavy use of OpenVZ. The documentation isn't the best, but it's often used for VPS slices.
shykes 14y ago
Hey everyone! We didn't plan on opening Docker for another few weeks, but last week [1] you guys made it clear you'd rather see it early, warts and all. So here it is! Pull requests are welcome! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408002
- peterwaller 14y ago
  I feel this is against HN etiquette but I need to thank you. Be encouraged and go far. This looks awesome. I wish you many a decent pull-request.
  - shanelja 14y ago
    It's never against the HN ethos to show someone you appreciate their work.
    - dclowd9901 14y ago
      I think he was more referring to the fact his comment lacked substance other than what amounted to an "Awesome." Honestly, I think it's fine. Sometimes an up arrow just isn't expressive enough.
      - _p62c 14y ago
        No, I understood the context of his message, but allow me to articulate further: "While it may be against the norm around these parts for a simple post of agreement or gratitude, it doesn't harm the community, on the other hand, it lets the OP know that posts of this kind are good and to do more of them in the future." However, I agree, sometimes it's nice to have something positive to read in the midst of constructive criticism.
creack 14y ago
Cool conversation underway on the IRC channel: #docker on freenode.
- jaytaylor 14y ago
  +1 for #docker@freenode, a very helpful resource. We've been playing around with docker internally at SendHub for the past few weeks, and so far it is looks promising. I'm /really/ looking forward to seeing and hearing about cool applications people find for docker containers!
buster 14y ago
Wow, great. Any plans to provide RHEL/CentOS instructions?
- shykes 14y ago
  Yes, definitely. There's an open issue here: https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/172 https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/172
KenCochrane 14y ago
If you have a cool screencast showing off what you made using docker, add the links here. We will take the best ones and put them on the docker.io website.
yebyen 14y ago
Did you guys decide to launch without the "push/pull images" mechanism? I can't find it on the site in 3 clicks or less, so I'm assuming it's not finished yet. (For anyone who's not the submitter, when this was mentioned about a week ago, @shykes was hinting that there would be some sort of community images repository made before launch.)
- KenCochrane 14y ago
  It is there, it made it in very recently, so the docs aren't great.. but check out the CLI docs for some more information on push/pull http://docker.io/documentation/commandline/cli.html http://docker.io/documentation/commandline/cli.html We welcome all pull requests and issues, so if you notice something missing in the docs, feel free to let us know, or add :)
- shykes 14y ago
  It is actually finished, just poorly documented. $ docker pull base $ CONTAINER=$(docker run -d base apt-get install -y curl) $ docker commit -m "Installed curl" $CONTAINER yebyen/betterbase $ docker push yebyen/betterbase It's buggy but it should work. Let me know if you actually do that, I will try to pull it :)
  - yebyen 14y ago
    OK, cool :) I'll try to do something better than just installing curl! You're right, the docs are indeed poor.
    - shykes 14y ago
      Also, make sure to try 'docker history'. It preserves the graph of which command created which image.... For example, this is the image I use to automatically update docker's binary downloads: $ docker pull shykes/dockerbuilder # Be patient, it's a big one $ docker history shykes/dockerbuilder $ docker run -i -t shykes/dockerbuilder /usr/local/bin/dockerbuilder $REVISION $S3_ID $S3_KEY
brunoqc 14y ago
It seems I'm unable to get the tarball by following the instructions. $ wget http://get.docker.io/builds/$(uname -s)/$(uname -m)/docker-master.tgz --2013-03-26 15:43:39-- http://get.docker.io/builds/Linux/i686/docker-master.tgz Resolving get.docker.io... 205.251.242.131 Connecting to get.docker.io|205.251.242.131|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found 2013-03-26 15:43:40 ERROR 404: Not Found.
- yebyen 14y ago
  I remember reading that Docker and LXC would only work on 64 bit platforms. If your uname -m was x86_64, the file would be there. Also read earlier today that Go's GC on i686 (or really any 32 bit platforms?) is not suitable for a daemon like docker, it leaks. This may be fixed in tip. I have no idea.
  - shykes 14y ago
    This is correct, we don't currently support 32-bit hosts, and don't publish 686 builds. We do plan to add cross-arch support in the future, though - it's just a lot of work to get right.
    - brunoqc 14y ago
      Then the uname -m part from http://docker.io/gettingstarted.html http://docker.io/gettingstarted.html is a lie! I'll try it on Windows with vagrant then.
      - shykes 14y ago
        Well, at least you found out right away your architecture wasn't supported :)
daenz 14y ago
This is really kind of incredible. If I understand it correctly, are containers : virtual machines :: greenthreads : threads?
- steeve 14y ago
  In terms of spawning time and overhead, yes. In terms of parallelism, containers are like threads ;)
dannyr 14y ago
This is the one written in Go right?
- KenCochrane 14y ago
  Correct, it is written in Go. Checkout the repo to see all the wonderfulness. https://github.com/dotcloud/docker https://github.com/dotcloud/docker
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    Ah, this is nice to know. Even though I do have some issues with Go, it is nice to see safer languages being used for this type of work. Good work.
- yebyen 14y ago
  It is written in Go. As opposed to (?)
  - KenCochrane 14y ago
    There are similar tools written in other languages, python, c, perl, etc.
    - yebyen 14y ago
      I was hoping someone would advocate for a particular one. (tool, not language) Maybe not the right article for that.
      - KenCochrane 14y ago
        I would argue for Docker, but i'm biased :)
      - iso8859-1 14y ago
        Maybe they could at least get linked?
steeve 14y ago
As said before, containerization is the new virtualization. This is History in the making people.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  Except it already was done in the mainframes and commercial UNIXes, nothing new.
  - Spooky23 14y ago
    It's also one of the few remaining reasons that people still buy Solaris or AIX boxes.
    - pjmlp 14y ago
      Well, HP-UX 10 already had quite a good container solution back in 1999, if memory does not fail me.
  - r00fus 14y ago
    There is a paradigm shift that happens when a great idea becomes open and easily redistributable outside the confines of the "cathedral".
    - pjmlp 14y ago
      The cathedral is what makes money for the people to contribute to the bazaar in their free time.
      - r00fus 14y ago
        And the cathedrals often benefit from the bazaar's innovations as well (e.g.: Google's use of Linux in both their datacenters as well as in Android). It's not an either-or, it's a symbiosis.
- cdjk 14y ago
  Kind of like FreeBSD has had with jails from around 2000...
agentultra 14y ago
Sweet. I will be reviewing this thoroughly as I have been looking forward to it since the PyCon demo!
trotsky 14y ago
I've loved messing around with docker so far. Do you guys have any plans to offer an image library? Pre-built versions of common open source tools like official .amis or the vmware virtual appliance directory? I understand it doesn't exactly match your primary goal, but i think there is a large untapped demand for lightweight appliances for use at home or inside the firewall that juju really isn't set up to satisfy. I love the similar feature on my synology nas, although those are really just packages. There is often a large gulf between knowing how to set something up and being willing to do it.
- shykes 14y ago
  There has been a lot of demand for that, yes. I think it makes a lot of sense and would make docker much more useful out of the box. You can already publish your own images with 'docker push'!
chrisfarms 14y ago
The push/pull mechanism for images seems like it adds a rather large centralised component to an otherwise very standalone piece of kit. Is this "docker registry server" the final thought on how people will "ship" their containers? ... I'd much rather have the docker cli be able to be able to be configured to use some private repository of images. Maybe I missed something.
- shykes 14y ago
  Our approach is that you need both: * A free, public mirror (comparable to pypi or the ubuntu mirrors) makes docker instantly more useful. You're 1 command away from sharing a ready-to-use image with the whole world, or trying someone else's image. * Docker definitely also needs a mechanism for moving images in a peer-to-peer fashion as you see fit - ala git pull. This is actually more work to get right, but we are working on it (and pull requests are always welcome :). Any docker will be able to target any other docker for push/pull. Hope this helps.
  - chrisfarms 14y ago
    Thanks, it does. I can kind of see your point for the "instant gratification" of a public repository... but I'd love to see docker become some kind of standard *NIX type tool for packing up blocks of software ready to move them around, and you don't see many simple tools backed to some third-party infrastructure. (don't get me wrong - I'm not totally against it.. I just want this to work, and work forever without being tied to anything) Also as lover of Go's idea to do away with a centralized repo for pkg management, it would be nice to see a similar approach taken for the handling of Standard Containers. I'm very excited by all this. It feels like such a step in the right direction for all kinds of deployment problems.
    - shykes 14y ago
      So, you might not read this in a while... But after thinking about this some more, I think Go's decentralized approach to package management is actually a great model. So, expect something very similar in the future :) Always happy to discuss further on #docker@freenode!
the_mitsuhiko 14y ago
Why is it aufs instead of unionfs? Not that I have a preference for either but I am curious :)
- KenCochrane 14y ago
  There are issues with unionfs in it's current form. Because of those issues, aufs is currently more stable. Docker isn't tied to aufs, if unionfs or any other union file system comes along and is better, we are more then happy to switch to it.
  - darkarmani 14y ago
    Can you give some details of those issues? I'm using unionfs and while I'm not taxing it very much I haven't seen any issues so far. I'd love to know what to look out for. Is it easy to setup aufs?
edwintorok 14y ago
Any plans on supporting network topology / network speed simulation like Mininet does? (i.e. the ability to set network latency, throughput and jitter using netem). Would be useful for testing purposes.
- shykes 14y ago
  Yes! As long as it doesn't break the guarantees of repeatability, we want to support as many networking topologies as possible. We're still looking for the best API to expose that. I know https://github.com/synack https://github.com/synack has been experimenting with docker + openvswitch, which opens many exciting possibilities.
AlexanderDhoore 14y ago
The more I look into freebsd, the more I realise how awesome it is. This same thing has been in freebsd for ages: jails. (maybe not the fancy deployment, but the container technology) That, together with ZFS turns freebsd into one hell of a server OS. ZFS seriously needs to come to linux. And don't say license problem, "there is nothing in either license that prevents distributing it in the form of a binary module or in the form of source code."[1] [1] http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue
- stock_toaster 14y ago
  I have been looking more at smartos (and other openindiana derivatives). Zones + KVM + ZFS. Oh my!
  - cwp 14y ago
    You forgot DTrace!
    - stock_toaster 14y ago
      ack! I sure did! And you are quite right. DTrace is super.
  - jnw2 14y ago
    smartos does seem to be missing an X server you can run in the global zone on the physical machine's physical video port(s), though, which makes it pretty useless for a home computer (which otherwise would be a great place to start playing with it before deploying it elsewhere).
    - helper 14y ago
      SmartOS is definitely not intended to be used as a desktop system, but it can work great as a home server if you have some spare hardware. OpenIndiana is another Illumos distro that can be used as a desktop. You get all of the core benefits of Illumos (zones, zfs, dtrace). The big downside is that you don't get the nice tools for managing zones/vms that SmartOS provides (vmadm/imgadm). FreeBSD has ported a lot of the best features from Illumos so it could also work for you. Just remember that an OS is only worth running if it has DTrace.
3PytbecKord 14y ago
Awesome product! I've squinted at lxc for a while now. This looks great! But: What about this security issue regarding lxc? Does docker takes measures to prevent this? http://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_413 http://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_413 The issue itself appears to be fixed if you use Linux 3.8 with compiled in namespace support (that breaks NFS and other filesystems at the moment)
Edmond 14y ago
Just a suggestion regarding the FAQ: What is a Standard Container? Wouldn't it be better to simply describe it as something similar to a vm snapshot/export. If I export say a virtualbox image I can move it around and run it on other vm players. I think the shipping container analogy is simply bad:)
darkarmani 14y ago
How does this compare to OpenVZ? I'm assuming this is much lighter than OpenVZ or am I wrong there?
- patrickgzill 14y ago
  OpenVZ gives you a container as they call it, which looks like its very own Linux OS. You can login to it, install packages with the package manager, etc. All processes you run, e.g. Apache/PHP, plus MySQL , run in this VM. PHP and MySQL would communicate over a Unix local socket, same as on non-virtualized Linux OS. Docker appears to run each process, in isolation. So you would have 2 isolated processes (Apache/PHP, plus MySQL) which can only talk to each other over a local network pipe (which should be quite fast with minimal overhead). (this is my understanding).
- lifty 14y ago
  The underlying technology(LXC) is quite similar to OpenVZ, the main difference being that LXC comes standard with the Linux kernel while OpenVZ comes as a module. They are both lightweight virtualization technologies that create separate process and memory spaces inside the same kernel. I think OpenVZ is also much older then LXC.
frozenport 14y ago
Reminds me a lot of hpc tools like `mpirun`, 'qsub`
siliconc0w 14y ago
For a similar but non LXC version of the same idea check out http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html Basically it records all the dependencies an application touches while running and creates an environment you can tar up and use on basically any system of the same arch. It even works cross distro. Wouldn't really work for 'the cloud' as you don't get the same security and isolation as LXC and you have to make sure all the execution paths are triggered but for a lot of apps it works great and it's ridiculously easy to use with no setup.
deepakprakash 14y ago
Very excited about the possibilities and convenience that Docker opens up. Will be taking it for a spin soon. Few questions regarding performance compared to running the processes directly on Linux (I guess this applies to LXCs in general - forgive me if these are due to a lack of knowledge about how LXCs work in general): - How much extra memory and CPU does each Docker process take? - Is there any performance hit with respect to CPU, I/O or memory? - Are there any benchmarks from testing available? Again, kudos to all the people at dotCloud behind Docker and extra props for open sourcing!!

403 points by shykes 14y ago

I'm glad to see work in the area of making linux containers more accessible. I recently stumbled upon openruko[1], an open source Heroku clone, and from there discovered linux containers and lxc[2]. It takes a bit of configuration to set up useful containers, though. I think the ideas behind Heroku and The Twelve-Factor App[3] are good, and containers are an important building block. I'm excited to see (and I'd like to see more) tools like Docker that aid in robust and streamlined container-based deployments in-house. [1] https://github.com/openruko https://github.com/openruko [2] http://lxc.sourceforge.net/ http://lxc.sourceforge.net/ [3] http://www.12factor.net/ http://www.12factor.net/

darkarmani 14y ago
I've been making heavy use of OpenVZ. The documentation isn't the best, but it's often used for VPS slices.

shykes 14y ago

Hey everyone! We didn't plan on opening Docker for another few weeks, but last week [1] you guys made it clear you'd rather see it early, warts and all. So here it is! Pull requests are welcome! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408002

peterwaller 14y ago
I feel this is against HN etiquette but I need to thank you. Be encouraged and go far. This looks awesome. I wish you many a decent pull-request.
- shanelja 14y ago
  It's never against the HN ethos to show someone you appreciate their work.
  - dclowd9901 14y ago
    I think he was more referring to the fact his comment lacked substance other than what amounted to an "Awesome." Honestly, I think it's fine. Sometimes an up arrow just isn't expressive enough.
    - _p62c 14y ago
      No, I understood the context of his message, but allow me to articulate further: "While it may be against the norm around these parts for a simple post of agreement or gratitude, it doesn't harm the community, on the other hand, it lets the OP know that posts of this kind are good and to do more of them in the future." However, I agree, sometimes it's nice to have something positive to read in the midst of constructive criticism.

creack 14y ago

Cool conversation underway on the IRC channel: #docker on freenode.

jaytaylor 14y ago
+1 for #docker@freenode, a very helpful resource. We've been playing around with docker internally at SendHub for the past few weeks, and so far it is looks promising. I'm /really/ looking forward to seeing and hearing about cool applications people find for docker containers!

buster 14y ago

Wow, great. Any plans to provide RHEL/CentOS instructions?

shykes 14y ago
Yes, definitely. There's an open issue here: https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/172 https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/172

KenCochrane 14y ago

If you have a cool screencast showing off what you made using docker, add the links here. We will take the best ones and put them on the docker.io website.

yebyen 14y ago

Did you guys decide to launch without the "push/pull images" mechanism? I can't find it on the site in 3 clicks or less, so I'm assuming it's not finished yet. (For anyone who's not the submitter, when this was mentioned about a week ago, @shykes was hinting that there would be some sort of community images repository made before launch.)

KenCochrane 14y ago
It is there, it made it in very recently, so the docs aren't great.. but check out the CLI docs for some more information on push/pull http://docker.io/documentation/commandline/cli.html http://docker.io/documentation/commandline/cli.html We welcome all pull requests and issues, so if you notice something missing in the docs, feel free to let us know, or add :)
shykes 14y ago
It is actually finished, just poorly documented. $ docker pull base $ CONTAINER=$(docker run -d base apt-get install -y curl) $ docker commit -m "Installed curl" $CONTAINER yebyen/betterbase $ docker push yebyen/betterbase It's buggy but it should work. Let me know if you actually do that, I will try to pull it :)
- yebyen 14y ago
  OK, cool :) I'll try to do something better than just installing curl! You're right, the docs are indeed poor.
  - shykes 14y ago
    Also, make sure to try 'docker history'. It preserves the graph of which command created which image.... For example, this is the image I use to automatically update docker's binary downloads: $ docker pull shykes/dockerbuilder # Be patient, it's a big one $ docker history shykes/dockerbuilder $ docker run -i -t shykes/dockerbuilder /usr/local/bin/dockerbuilder $REVISION $S3_ID $S3_KEY

brunoqc 14y ago

It seems I'm unable to get the tarball by following the instructions. $ wget http://get.docker.io/builds/$(uname -s)/$(uname -m)/docker-master.tgz --2013-03-26 15:43:39-- http://get.docker.io/builds/Linux/i686/docker-master.tgz Resolving get.docker.io... 205.251.242.131 Connecting to get.docker.io|205.251.242.131|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found 2013-03-26 15:43:40 ERROR 404: Not Found.

yebyen 14y ago
I remember reading that Docker and LXC would only work on 64 bit platforms. If your uname -m was x86_64, the file would be there. Also read earlier today that Go's GC on i686 (or really any 32 bit platforms?) is not suitable for a daemon like docker, it leaks. This may be fixed in tip. I have no idea.
- shykes 14y ago
  This is correct, we don't currently support 32-bit hosts, and don't publish 686 builds. We do plan to add cross-arch support in the future, though - it's just a lot of work to get right.
  - brunoqc 14y ago
    Then the uname -m part from http://docker.io/gettingstarted.html http://docker.io/gettingstarted.html is a lie! I'll try it on Windows with vagrant then.
    - shykes 14y ago
      Well, at least you found out right away your architecture wasn't supported :)

daenz 14y ago

This is really kind of incredible. If I understand it correctly, are containers : virtual machines :: greenthreads : threads?

steeve 14y ago
In terms of spawning time and overhead, yes. In terms of parallelism, containers are like threads ;)

dannyr 14y ago

This is the one written in Go right?

KenCochrane 14y ago
Correct, it is written in Go. Checkout the repo to see all the wonderfulness. https://github.com/dotcloud/docker https://github.com/dotcloud/docker
- pjmlp 14y ago
  Ah, this is nice to know. Even though I do have some issues with Go, it is nice to see safer languages being used for this type of work. Good work.
yebyen 14y ago
It is written in Go. As opposed to (?)
- KenCochrane 14y ago
  There are similar tools written in other languages, python, c, perl, etc.
  - yebyen 14y ago
    I was hoping someone would advocate for a particular one. (tool, not language) Maybe not the right article for that.
    - KenCochrane 14y ago
      I would argue for Docker, but i'm biased :)
    - iso8859-1 14y ago
      Maybe they could at least get linked?

steeve 14y ago

As said before, containerization is the new virtualization. This is History in the making people.

pjmlp 14y ago
Except it already was done in the mainframes and commercial UNIXes, nothing new.
- Spooky23 14y ago
  It's also one of the few remaining reasons that people still buy Solaris or AIX boxes.
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    Well, HP-UX 10 already had quite a good container solution back in 1999, if memory does not fail me.
- r00fus 14y ago
  There is a paradigm shift that happens when a great idea becomes open and easily redistributable outside the confines of the "cathedral".
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    The cathedral is what makes money for the people to contribute to the bazaar in their free time.
    - r00fus 14y ago
      And the cathedrals often benefit from the bazaar's innovations as well (e.g.: Google's use of Linux in both their datacenters as well as in Android). It's not an either-or, it's a symbiosis.
cdjk 14y ago
Kind of like FreeBSD has had with jails from around 2000...

agentultra 14y ago

Sweet. I will be reviewing this thoroughly as I have been looking forward to it since the PyCon demo!

trotsky 14y ago

I've loved messing around with docker so far. Do you guys have any plans to offer an image library? Pre-built versions of common open source tools like official .amis or the vmware virtual appliance directory? I understand it doesn't exactly match your primary goal, but i think there is a large untapped demand for lightweight appliances for use at home or inside the firewall that juju really isn't set up to satisfy. I love the similar feature on my synology nas, although those are really just packages. There is often a large gulf between knowing how to set something up and being willing to do it.

shykes 14y ago
There has been a lot of demand for that, yes. I think it makes a lot of sense and would make docker much more useful out of the box. You can already publish your own images with 'docker push'!

chrisfarms 14y ago

The push/pull mechanism for images seems like it adds a rather large centralised component to an otherwise very standalone piece of kit. Is this "docker registry server" the final thought on how people will "ship" their containers? ... I'd much rather have the docker cli be able to be able to be configured to use some private repository of images. Maybe I missed something.

shykes 14y ago
Our approach is that you need both: * A free, public mirror (comparable to pypi or the ubuntu mirrors) makes docker instantly more useful. You're 1 command away from sharing a ready-to-use image with the whole world, or trying someone else's image. * Docker definitely also needs a mechanism for moving images in a peer-to-peer fashion as you see fit - ala git pull. This is actually more work to get right, but we are working on it (and pull requests are always welcome :). Any docker will be able to target any other docker for push/pull. Hope this helps.
- chrisfarms 14y ago
  Thanks, it does. I can kind of see your point for the "instant gratification" of a public repository... but I'd love to see docker become some kind of standard *NIX type tool for packing up blocks of software ready to move them around, and you don't see many simple tools backed to some third-party infrastructure. (don't get me wrong - I'm not totally against it.. I just want this to work, and work forever without being tied to anything) Also as lover of Go's idea to do away with a centralized repo for pkg management, it would be nice to see a similar approach taken for the handling of Standard Containers. I'm very excited by all this. It feels like such a step in the right direction for all kinds of deployment problems.
  - shykes 14y ago
    So, you might not read this in a while... But after thinking about this some more, I think Go's decentralized approach to package management is actually a great model. So, expect something very similar in the future :) Always happy to discuss further on #docker@freenode!

the_mitsuhiko 14y ago

Why is it aufs instead of unionfs? Not that I have a preference for either but I am curious :)

KenCochrane 14y ago
There are issues with unionfs in it's current form. Because of those issues, aufs is currently more stable. Docker isn't tied to aufs, if unionfs or any other union file system comes along and is better, we are more then happy to switch to it.
- darkarmani 14y ago
  Can you give some details of those issues? I'm using unionfs and while I'm not taxing it very much I haven't seen any issues so far. I'd love to know what to look out for. Is it easy to setup aufs?

edwintorok 14y ago

Any plans on supporting network topology / network speed simulation like Mininet does? (i.e. the ability to set network latency, throughput and jitter using netem). Would be useful for testing purposes.

shykes 14y ago
Yes! As long as it doesn't break the guarantees of repeatability, we want to support as many networking topologies as possible. We're still looking for the best API to expose that. I know https://github.com/synack https://github.com/synack has been experimenting with docker + openvswitch, which opens many exciting possibilities.

AlexanderDhoore 14y ago

The more I look into freebsd, the more I realise how awesome it is. This same thing has been in freebsd for ages: jails. (maybe not the fancy deployment, but the container technology) That, together with ZFS turns freebsd into one hell of a server OS. ZFS seriously needs to come to linux. And don't say license problem, "there is nothing in either license that prevents distributing it in the form of a binary module or in the form of source code."[1] [1] http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue

stock_toaster 14y ago
I have been looking more at smartos (and other openindiana derivatives). Zones + KVM + ZFS. Oh my!
- cwp 14y ago
  You forgot DTrace!
  - stock_toaster 14y ago
    ack! I sure did! And you are quite right. DTrace is super.
- jnw2 14y ago
  smartos does seem to be missing an X server you can run in the global zone on the physical machine's physical video port(s), though, which makes it pretty useless for a home computer (which otherwise would be a great place to start playing with it before deploying it elsewhere).
  - helper 14y ago
    SmartOS is definitely not intended to be used as a desktop system, but it can work great as a home server if you have some spare hardware. OpenIndiana is another Illumos distro that can be used as a desktop. You get all of the core benefits of Illumos (zones, zfs, dtrace). The big downside is that you don't get the nice tools for managing zones/vms that SmartOS provides (vmadm/imgadm). FreeBSD has ported a lot of the best features from Illumos so it could also work for you. Just remember that an OS is only worth running if it has DTrace.

3PytbecKord 14y ago

Awesome product! I've squinted at lxc for a while now. This looks great! But: What about this security issue regarding lxc? Does docker takes measures to prevent this? http://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_413 http://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_413 The issue itself appears to be fixed if you use Linux 3.8 with compiled in namespace support (that breaks NFS and other filesystems at the moment)

Edmond 14y ago

Just a suggestion regarding the FAQ: What is a Standard Container? Wouldn't it be better to simply describe it as something similar to a vm snapshot/export. If I export say a virtualbox image I can move it around and run it on other vm players. I think the shipping container analogy is simply bad:)

darkarmani 14y ago

How does this compare to OpenVZ? I'm assuming this is much lighter than OpenVZ or am I wrong there?

patrickgzill 14y ago
OpenVZ gives you a container as they call it, which looks like its very own Linux OS. You can login to it, install packages with the package manager, etc. All processes you run, e.g. Apache/PHP, plus MySQL , run in this VM. PHP and MySQL would communicate over a Unix local socket, same as on non-virtualized Linux OS. Docker appears to run each process, in isolation. So you would have 2 isolated processes (Apache/PHP, plus MySQL) which can only talk to each other over a local network pipe (which should be quite fast with minimal overhead). (this is my understanding).
lifty 14y ago
The underlying technology(LXC) is quite similar to OpenVZ, the main difference being that LXC comes standard with the Linux kernel while OpenVZ comes as a module. They are both lightweight virtualization technologies that create separate process and memory spaces inside the same kernel. I think OpenVZ is also much older then LXC.

frozenport 14y ago

Reminds me a lot of hpc tools like `mpirun`, 'qsub`

siliconc0w 14y ago

For a similar but non LXC version of the same idea check out http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html Basically it records all the dependencies an application touches while running and creates an environment you can tar up and use on basically any system of the same arch. It even works cross distro. Wouldn't really work for 'the cloud' as you don't get the same security and isolation as LXC and you have to make sure all the execution paths are triggered but for a lot of apps it works great and it's ridiculously easy to use with no setup.

deepakprakash 14y ago

Very excited about the possibilities and convenience that Docker opens up. Will be taking it for a spin soon. Few questions regarding performance compared to running the processes directly on Linux (I guess this applies to LXCs in general - forgive me if these are due to a lack of knowledge about how LXCs work in general): - How much extra memory and CPU does each Docker process take? - Is there any performance hit with respect to CPU, I/O or memory? - Are there any benchmarks from testing available? Again, kudos to all the people at dotCloud behind Docker and extra props for open sourcing!!