Ubuntu Picks Upstart, KVM

derrida writes "Because the traditional System V init daemon (SysVinit) does not deal well with modern hardware, including hotplug devices, USB hard and flash drives, and network-mounted filesystems, Ubuntu replaced it with the upstart init daemon. Several other replacements for SysVinit are also available. One of the most prominent, initng, is available for Debian and runs on Ubuntu. Solaris uses SMF (Service Management Facility) and Mac OS uses launchd. Over time, Ubuntu will likely come to incorporate features of each of these systems into Upstart. Furthermore, heading in a different direction from its main rivals, Ubuntu Linux will use KVM as its primary virtualization software. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server both use the Xen virtualization software, a 'hypervisor' layer that lets multiple operating systems run on the same computer. In contrast, the KVM software runs on top of a version of Linux, the 'host' operating system that provides a foundation for other 'guest' operating systems to run in a virtual mode." Slashdot shares a corporate overlord with Linux.com.

Great

[laptop006]

Except Upstart has been in Ubuntu since IIRC 6.10, nothing has even changed about the design.

Re:News?

[macshit]

Agreed, upstart doesn't seem like news, but I'd be curious to hear a bit of back-and-forth as to the benefits of the various initscript replacements. Ubuntu makes a case for upstart on their site; it would be nice to known what others think.

Similarly for kvm vs. xen: xen is on roll these days, with everybody and their dog using it, but it seems like the company behind it is moving in an increasingly proprietary direction, so it would be good to hear what's up with that, and how kvm compares.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot find any reference to initng in the Debian repositories, but Upstart is in Debian experimental http://packages.debian.org/experimental/upstart [debian.org]

Re:Getting a tad annoyed at this..

[Daengbo]

Upstart still accepts the SysV init scripts.

Re:kvm

[twistedcubic]

Wow. Dude, KVM is the only one I've gotten to work with no fuss. For me it was downloading kvm-57.tar.gz, ./configure; make; sudo make install; qemu-imw create ... image.img; qemu-system-x86_64 -hda ... ; qemu-system-x86_64 image.img. Installing Debian is best (vs, say, Fedora) because it's faster with a smaller amount of memory. Now go ahead and download KVM and enjoy!

Re:KVM less of a surprise than you might think...

[Anonymous Coward]

"the first" flamethrower? Huh? Fedora has been supporting KVM for a while! Yes, Fedora _also_ supports Xen, but that might change, given that Xen is always a few kernel versions late and Fedora ships very recent kernels (so there's now a special old kernel-xen used for the Xen Dom0 and DomU kernels, basically the situation sucks).

Re:KVM less of a surprise than you might think...

[digipres]

And if the virtualisation waters weren't already muddy enough, we have kernel hacker Paul http://www.rustyfacts.com/ [rustyfacts.com] Rusty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Russell [wikipedia.org] Russell coming up with lguest http://lguest.ozlabs.org/lguest [ozlabs.org] .

So we have a kernel guy and his own take on Linux and virtual machines. This may prove hugely popular, though I hear that not too many turned up for Rusty's lguest tutorial at LCA08. Then again that may be because he scared us off with a "if you haven't done the homework, don't turn up!"

Re:kvm

[kripkenstein]

VMWare Server is probably the safest choice. It's stable, works, and is fairly convenient.

Parallels just came out with convenient installation for Ubuntu, I haven't checked it out yet. But it is supposedly very user-friendly on other platforms, so it might be worth a shot if VMWare isn't working out.

Re:Virtualisation extensions

[CmdrTHAC0]

It requires them to run with performance, yes. It falls back to pure emulation when they aren't available, because it *is* still qemu as well.

Meanwhile, my crystal ball shows me that VT-capable hardware is not going away, so the "tiny fraction" will become the majority. It seems important to consider them when thinking of future directions.

Re:KVM less of a surprise than you might think...

[zsouthboy]

A GUI for virtualization is already in Hardy, everyone.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=983&num=1 [phoronix.com]

Re:Testing (Lenny) still defaults to sysv init.

[deepclutch]

and worst I cant find initng any more in debian repos.OK I got it!initng is orphaned in Debian :p read this you Debianites: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=426268 [debian.org]