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I'm thinking about trying the following setup:
- install archlinux only with the minimum required packages to run linux containers(lxc)
- create a container and give it access to the host hardware(including one tty for the x server)
- install a full blown desktop system in that container, and make x start on the host tty
- disable every possible service from the host archlinux(even networking so the container can manage it directly using tools such a network manager), and leave only what is necessary to start the main container at boot)
The advantage behind this setup is easy maintainance: I can easily go back to a fresh system state by simply switching tty and disabling the container, or I can even use LVM snapshots to implement a simple backup/restore tool for the container.
I also lets me run many linux distros/environments side by side, switching between them using only ctrl+alt+fkeys(since the other distros would each have access to a host tty) without fear that I will ever need to recover my host system.
It would be similar to having only a xen hypervisor installed, with Dom0 being the linux container that has hardware access.
Anyone ever done something like this before? If so, do you have any notes about how to do it(I'm new to linux containers) and how it worked out?
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I played around with LXC a while ago and I really like the feel of it, since it's very lightweight and provides a nice way of sandboxing. Unfortunately, I didn't take it that far, so I can't provide any help. I also didn't manage to get arch linux running inside an container. Debian worked, but arch wasn't booting at all. But this was shortly after the switch to systemd, therefore every documentation about it was outdated.
But I really like your idea. Can you post updates on the progress you've made? I'm very interested if your scenario will work.
Last edited by silentsnake (2013-03-27 00:45:43)
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