Hi list, Here is the idea. I am running a domU out of a partition on a USB drive. I use the other partition to store the domU state. Then I carry this USB key to my office and restore the VM at the point where I left it. Thus I am trying to use xen''s virtualization to carry my desktop on a USB key. I have put up a web page explaining the details and a script to prepare the USB key. Please have a look at it and give your feedback. www-users.cs.umn.edu/~salvi/xenonkey/index.html Thanks, -- Jayesh _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On 1/23/06, Jayesh Salvi <jayeshsalvi@gmail.com> wrote:> Here is the idea. I am running a domU out of a partition on a USB drive. I > use the other partition to store the domU state. Then I carry this USB key > to my office and restore the VM at the point where I left it. Thus I am > trying to use xen''s virtualization to carry my desktop on a USB key. > www-users.cs.umn.edu/~salvi/xenonkey/index.htmlI have the strong opinion your key will _die_ in couple of weeks. Daniel -- Dániel Vásárhelyi nsfw.hu | tophost.hu _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com lists.xensource.com/xen-users
I had initial thoughts along the same line. I have built the kernel to run off a key, but not tried it yet. But ALL logging need to be moved to tmp, all lock files need to be moved to tmp, etc... As the general lifetime of a key is like 10yrs, if you only write on it once/twice a day. But if you use it daily then..... it won''t last long. Also, I had an idea of using a squash FS, (if its called that), where you mount the drive read only, then mount a ramdrive ontop of it. So any modifications will be from the ram. Same as what live cds do. But if it crashes, you have no logs. Or, sacrifice ram and boot into ramdisk. Obviously this requires alot of effort, which i currently don''t have. W ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dániel Vásárhelyi" <asdmin@gmail.com> To: "xen users list" <Xen-users@lists.xensource.com> Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 11:08 AM Subject: Re: [Xen-users] Xen on USB Key On 1/23/06, Jayesh Salvi <jayeshsalvi@gmail.com> wrote:> Here is the idea. I am running a domU out of a partition on a USB drive.I> use the other partition to store the domU state. Then I carry this USB key > to my office and restore the VM at the point where I left it. Thus I am > trying to use xen''s virtualization to carry my desktop on a USB key. > www-users.cs.umn.edu/~salvi/xenonkey/index.htmlI have the strong opinion your key will _die_ in couple of weeks. Daniel -- Dániel Vásárhelyi nsfw.hu | tophost.hu _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com lists.xensource.com/xen-users _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 12:17 +0000, William Man wrote:> I had initial thoughts along the same line. I have built the kernel to run > off a key, but not tried it yet. > But ALL logging need to be moved to tmp, all lock files need to be moved to > tmp, etc... >I heard of people building usb-bootable version of some (live)distributions, and that they had to deal with similar issues. Maybe it''s worth looking at them how they solve this issue. Sorry for not having a link at hand, I just remember something like that.> As the general lifetime of a key is like 10yrs, if you only write on it > once/twice a day. But if you use it daily then..... it won''t last long. >What is "not long"? If it''s only a month, that''s probably enough! That''s a cool tool, if you use it daily, spending 20Dollars/Euros each month for a new USB stick is not exactly a lot compared the usefullness of that tool. The same technology could probably applied to 2.5" usb harddisk, making it slightly bigger, but still possible to have your complete desktop in a shirt''s pocket. Henning _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Am Montag, 23. Januar 2006 13:17 schrieb William Man:> I had initial thoughts along the same line. I have built the kernel to run > off a key, but not tried it yet. > But ALL logging need to be moved to tmp, all lock files need to be moved to > tmp, etc... > > As the general lifetime of a key is like 10yrs, if you only write on it > once/twice a day. But if you use it daily then..... it won''t last long. > > Also, I had an idea of using a squash FS, (if its called that), where you > mount the drive read only, then mount a ramdrive ontop of it. So any > modifications will be from the ram. Same as what live cds do. But if it > crashes, you have no logs. Or, sacrifice ram and boot into ramdisk. > > Obviously this requires alot of effort, which i currently don''t have.... or boot a hdd-less xen system via pxe and mount a remote blockdevice (san) in the initrrd and use it as root device. this definitly works but also requires some work to be done to set something like this up. espacially the initrd part where network support & san support must be included and scripted. so the difficult part is not the xen related part at all...> W--Ralph> > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Dániel Vásárhelyi" <asdmin@gmail.com> > To: "xen users list" <Xen-users@lists.xensource.com> > Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 11:08 AM > Subject: Re: [Xen-users] Xen on USB Key > > On 1/23/06, Jayesh Salvi <jayeshsalvi@gmail.com> wrote: > > Here is the idea. I am running a domU out of a partition on a USB drive. > > I > > > use the other partition to store the domU state. Then I carry this USB > > key to my office and restore the VM at the point where I left it. Thus I > > am trying to use xen''s virtualization to carry my desktop on a USB key. > > www-users.cs.umn.edu/~salvi/xenonkey/index.html > > I have the strong opinion your key will _die_ in couple of weeks. > > Daniel > > -- > Dániel Vásárhelyi > nsfw.hu | tophost.hu > > _______________________________________________ > Xen-users mailing list > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com > lists.xensource.com/xen-users > > > _______________________________________________ > Xen-users mailing list > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com > lists.xensource.com/xen-users_______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> -----Original Message----- > From: xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com > [mailto:xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of > Henning Sprang > Sent: 23 January 2006 12:31 > To: xen-users@lists.xensource.com > Subject: Re: [Xen-users] Xen on USB Key > > On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 12:17 +0000, William Man wrote: > > I had initial thoughts along the same line. I have built > the kernel > > to run off a key, but not tried it yet. > > But ALL logging need to be moved to tmp, all lock files need to be > > moved to tmp, etc... > > > > I heard of people building usb-bootable version of some > (live)distributions, and that they had to deal with similar issues. > Maybe it''s worth looking at them how they solve this issue. > Sorry for not having a link at hand, I just remember > something like that. > > > > As the general lifetime of a key is like 10yrs, if you only > write on > > it once/twice a day. But if you use it daily then..... it > won''t last long. > > > > What is "not long"? > If it''s only a month, that''s probably enough! That''s a cool > tool, if you use it daily, spending 20Dollars/Euros each > month for a new USB stick is not exactly a lot compared the > usefullness of that tool. > > The same technology could probably applied to 2.5" usb > harddisk, making it slightly bigger, but still possible to > have your complete desktop in a shirt''s pocket. > > Henning >A flash device will allow writing to the same block (sector) at least 100000 times, AMD/Spansion devices support 1000000 writes to the same block. A write, in this case, is defined as a complete cycle of erase (make it all ones) and program to zeros. If you do a write every second (to the same place), one million seconds is about 11 days (277 hours), but it''s very unlikely that a clever Flash File-system would allow you to write to the same area over and over again, as it''s normally remapping sectors when they are written, rather than doing a erase/write cycle, so it should last a lot longer than that. [Caching in the OS will also help if you''re writing to the same place]. -- Mats _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com lists.xensource.com/xen-users
It is possible to eliminate frequent writes to the USB drive. I think the ''live'' distributions that run off the CD must be doing that, as CD is readonly.For a simple starter I will see if I can use something like ramfs to achieve this. Thanks for the suggestions on this line. Jayesh On 1/23/06, Henning Sprang <henning_sprang@gmx.net> wrote:> > On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 12:17 +0000, William Man wrote: > > I had initial thoughts along the same line. I have built the kernel to > run > > off a key, but not tried it yet. > > But ALL logging need to be moved to tmp, all lock files need to be moved > to > > tmp, etc... > > > > I heard of people building usb-bootable version of some > (live)distributions, and that they had to deal with similar issues. > Maybe it''s worth looking at them how they solve this issue. > Sorry for not having a link at hand, I just remember something like > that. > > > > As the general lifetime of a key is like 10yrs, if you only write on it > > once/twice a day. But if you use it daily then..... it won''t last long. > > > > What is "not long"? > If it''s only a month, that''s probably enough! That''s a cool tool, if you > use it daily, spending 20Dollars/Euros each month for a new USB stick is > not exactly a lot compared the usefullness of that tool. > > The same technology could probably applied to 2.5" usb harddisk, making > it slightly bigger, but still possible to have your complete desktop in > a shirt''s pocket. > > Henning > > > > _______________________________________________ > Xen-users mailing list > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com > lists.xensource.com/xen-users >-- Jayesh _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Hey Jayesh, that''s a very interesting idea. IBM is doing someting similar with VMWare, called Soulpads: research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/SoulPad/soulpad.html Maybe one could consider to use the Xen 3.0 Demo CD for booting and omitting the problem of having an installed and running Xen on every machine one wants to use. Regarding the automatic network configuration when resuming a domU, maybe "expect" is a good way to write a script that calls xm console id, sets up the network within domU and finally disconnects from the console. Regards, Michael On Monday 23 January 2006 06:39, Jayesh Salvi wrote:> Hi list, > > Here is the idea. I am running a domU out of a partition on a USB drive. I > use the other partition to store the domU state. Then I carry this USB key > to my office and restore the VM at the point where I left it. Thus I am > trying to use xen''s virtualization to carry my desktop on a USB key. > > I have put up a web page explaining the details and a script to prepare the > USB key. Please have a look at it and give your feedback. > > www-users.cs.umn.edu/~salvi/xenonkey/index.html > > Thanks, > -- > Jayesh-- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Mey Thinking Objects Software GmbH | mailto: michael.mey@to.com Lilienthalstrasse 2/1 | phone: +49 711 88770-147 70825 Stuttgart-Korntal, Germany | fax: +49 711 88770-449 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Yes I was thinking on these lines. However in a desktop environment something like SAN or boot over network won''t be possible. But if you consider typical use cases, then it won''t be too inconvinient to gather all the immuatble (and bulky) part (bin,lib,usr) in a readonly image and deploy it on the machines that you expect to use most frequently (your office and home desktop). Then all you have to carry on disk is changing part (home,var). I had tried this last week, but I could not figure out the readonly part of a distribution. I will update on this if I get any success. Thanks, Jayesh On 1/23/06, Ralph Passgang <ralph@debianbase.de> wrote:> > Am Montag, 23. Januar 2006 13:17 schrieb William Man: > > I had initial thoughts along the same line. I have built the kernel to > run > > off a key, but not tried it yet. > > But ALL logging need to be moved to tmp, all lock files need to be moved > to > > tmp, etc... > > > > As the general lifetime of a key is like 10yrs, if you only write on it > > once/twice a day. But if you use it daily then..... it won''t last long. > > > > Also, I had an idea of using a squash FS, (if its called that), where > you > > mount the drive read only, then mount a ramdrive ontop of it. So any > > modifications will be from the ram. Same as what live cds do. But if > it > > crashes, you have no logs. Or, sacrifice ram and boot into ramdisk. > > > > Obviously this requires alot of effort, which i currently don''t have. > > ... or boot a hdd-less xen system via pxe and mount a remote blockdevice > (san) > in the initrrd and use it as root device. this definitly works but also > requires some work to be done to set something like this up. espacially > the > initrd part where network support & san support must be included and > scripted. so the difficult part is not the xen related part at all... > > > W > > --Ralph > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Dániel Vásárhelyi" <asdmin@gmail.com> > > To: "xen users list" <Xen-users@lists.xensource.com> > > Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 11:08 AM > > Subject: Re: [Xen-users] Xen on USB Key > > > > On 1/23/06, Jayesh Salvi <jayeshsalvi@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Here is the idea. I am running a domU out of a partition on a USB > drive. > > > > I > > > > > use the other partition to store the domU state. Then I carry this USB > > > key to my office and restore the VM at the point where I left it. Thus > I > > > am trying to use xen''s virtualization to carry my desktop on a USB > key. > > > www-users.cs.umn.edu/~salvi/xenonkey/index.html > > > > I have the strong opinion your key will _die_ in couple of weeks. > > > > Daniel > > > > -- > > Dániel Vásárhelyi > > nsfw.hu | tophost.hu > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Xen-users mailing list > > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com > > lists.xensource.com/xen-users > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Xen-users mailing list > > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com > > lists.xensource.com/xen-users > > _______________________________________________ > Xen-users mailing list > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com > lists.xensource.com/xen-users >-- Jayesh _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> > If you do a write every second (to the same place), one million seconds > is about 11 days (277 hours), but it''s very unlikely that a clever Flash > File-system would allow you to write to the same area over and over > again, as it''s normally remapping sectors when they are written, rather > than doing a erase/write cycle, so it should last a lot longer than > that. [Caching in the OS will also help if you''re writing to the same > place]. > > -- > Mats > > I think yes, OS is smart reagarding mounted devices (or USB devices Idon''t know). While working on the USB drives, when I do major copies to USB drive, it takes pretty long time when I unmount that device. I guess, it is at that time when the OS/USB driver does actual I/O. If anyone has some definite info/pointers on this aspect, I will be greatful to know. Thanks, Jayesh _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com lists.xensource.com/xen-users