Re: [uml-devel] [RFC] UML kernel & rootfs bundle with every kernel release ?

[Blaisorblade]

On lunedì 2 aprile 2007, Antoine Martin wrote:
> Jeff Dike wrote:
> > On Sun, Apr 01, 2007 at 08:58:45PM +0100, Antoine Martin wrote:
> >> I reckon that one critical thing which could drastically increase the
> >> user base would be to have a working virtual framebuffer implementation.
> >
> > Why?  I've never understood what a framebuffer gives you that you
> > don't have now.
>
> Just like the network auto-configuration via dhcp,
Hmm... for that to be completely plug-and-play you need to make sure a dhcp 
server on the host exists.

Vmware runs a separate DHCP server exactly for this, even if we should avoid 
that as much as possible.

> it would allow users 
> to download images+kernel and run them like appliances without
> understanding anything about X or UML, just click and run.

> We are all capable of setting up Xvfb here, but most users are not,
> which is why they download ready-made images.

What about installing and pre-configuring Xnest on the image? With a suitable 
script calling xhost on the host, it just works.

This project did it:
http://umlbuilder.sourceforge.net/

although it stopped working for me ages ago (probably for some UML bug). I 
built a Mandrake image (that I now lost) with Xnest configured. With a script 
on the host which passes the host IP and that calls xhost, it should work 
easily. And btw, we need a standard startup script anyway.

> It would also make it a lot easier to focus on writing a management UI,
> hell if there isn't one shortly after, I'll do one myself!

Why not one management UI running from the host, a-la vmware? Possibly, with 
as much code as possible in scripting languages, for better transparency.

> Think of a UML browser image (running IE via wine in a limited image
> with just X + wine + IE - I would much prefer that to having wine+IE
> installed locally), testing framebuffer apps like gtk-fb/cairo-fb
> without risking your dev environment, etc...
>
> Antoine



-- 
Inform me of my mistakes, so I can add them to my list!
Paolo Giarrusso, aka Blaisorblade
http://www.user-mode-linux.org/~blaisorblade
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