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It's an alternative to Sandstorm. We've made some different choices, like using full KVM VMs instead of Linux containers for apps. Portal also doesn't require t
by staunch 12y ago
It's an alternative to Sandstorm. We've made some different choices, like using full KVM VMs instead of Linux containers for apps. Portal also doesn't require that apps know much about Portal itself to be run as apps. They can use their own authentication or the single sign on system.
An unmodified Ubuntu cloud image is a valid (though basic) Portal app and can boot using CloudInit. Real world apps store data on the separate "user data" drive that is attached to all app VMs, which makes them upgradeable. And they almost always have a web interface for the user to interact with.
They can also use the Portal metadata service to interact with the system. But for the most part apps just receive raw TCP/IP traffic or proxied HTTP traffic and work normally.
We began working on Portal before Sandstorm was public, but I can tell you this is the first time I've been happy to see other people working on the same idea as myself. Decentralizing the internet is more of a mission than a competition.
Also, we expect to be able to run Sandstorm as a Portal app, so you could run many Sandstorm apps inside one VM, assuming they're okay with that.
- rdrey 12y agoWhat I like about the VM-centric design you've adopted is that 'apps' are long-running by default. Sandstorm in its current form is not great for hosting internet-facing sites.
- general_failure 12y agoWhat is that?
- kentonv 12y agoSandstorm tries to encourage web publishing apps to work in a way that significantly reduces resource usage and improves security. The platform will let an app publish a static web site which does not require starting up the app to serve. The platform also lets an app expose an API which starts up the app on-demand. So the app can publish a bunch of static content which includes Javascript that invokes the API when needed (e.g. when a comment is posted), which then wakes up the app to update the static content. But, yeah, for a fully-dynamic web site served to a large number of users, Sandstorm currently isn't well-suited. It'll get there eventually, but given that other platforms (like Portal) already cover this use case pretty well, we wanted to focus on the interesting things we can do with fine-grained containers.
- kentonv 12y ago> Also, we expect to be able to run Sandstorm as a Portal app, so you could run many Sandstorm apps inside one VM, assuming they're okay with that. I'm definitely OK with that. :)
- staunch 12y agoAwesome to hear that. You guys seem to have the same motivations, so I'm sure we can make everything play nicely together. I love your LAN house, btw. We're also insanely hardcore PC gamers who think LAN parties are the most fun thing in the world :-)