User Mode Linux® [Paperback]

Jeff Dike (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0131865056 | ISBN-13: 978-0131865051 | Publication Date: April 22, 2006 | Edition: 1

With User Mode Linux you can create virtual Linux machines within a Linux computer and use them to safely test and debug applications, network services, and even kernels. You can try out new distributions, experiment with buggy software, and even test security. Now, for the first time, the creator and maintainer of User Mode Linux shows how to put it to work hands-on. Jeff Dike covers everything from getting started through running enterprise-class User Mode Linux servers. You'll find authoritative advice on bootup, compilation, administration, specialized configurations, and much more.

Coverage includes

• What User Mode Linux is, how it works, and its uses in Linux networks
• Key applications, including server consolidation, development, and disaster recovery
• Booting and exploration: logins, consoles, swap space, partitioned disks, and more
• Copy-On-Write (COW): UML's efficient approach to storing filesystem changes
• In-depth discussion of User Mode Linux networking and security
• Centrally managing User Mode Linux instances, and controlling their hardware resources
• Implementing clusters and other specialized configurations
• Setting up User Mode Linux servers, step-by-step: small-scale and large-scale examples
• The future of virtualization and User Mode Linux

Whether you're a netadmin, sysadmin, teacher, student, or programmer, User Mode Linux®--the technology and this book--is indispensable.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeff Dike, an engineer at Intel, is author and maintainer of User Mode Linux. Well known throughout the Linux technical community, he has been active in Linux kernel development for more than five years. He holds a degree in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

When I started the User Mode Linux (UML) project in 1999, I had no idea how large a project it would become or how much of my time it would end up consuming. As time went on, the UML user base grew, and people found new ways to use it. As a result of their requests, UML contains a number of features that would never have occurred to me.

This book concentrates on the use of UML rather than its internals or plans for the future. I've tried to make it as easy as possible to get started with UML and put to good use all of the features my users induced me to add. Of course, I couldn't resist going into how UML works and what I have planned for its future. That would be too much to ask of any developer of any project. I hope this content adds to the book and the readers' understanding and appreciation of UML.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (April 22, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131865056
• ISBN-13: 978-0131865051
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,456,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars solid book, about much more than just UML, July 31, 2006

By 

tmancill (Vancouver, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: User Mode Linux® (Paperback)

I've read several of the books in Bruce Peren's Open Source Series, and this is by far the best. I read it cover-to-cover and enjoyed the author's relaxed and informative writing style.

The book does a good job of describing UML configuration options and facilities. But where it really shines is in the ancillary material, covering the whys and hows of other subsystems that work in conjunction with UML. For example, I found the treatment of network trouble-shooting that is interspersed with the UML networking section to be very well-done and useful beyond UML alone. Another high point is the information about kernel memory management (in conjunction with the discussion of tt, skas0 and skas3). But by far, the most enjoyable and impressive section of the book is the last two chapters in which the author challenges the reader to think about the wider implications of OS virtualization - for example why you might want to embed an instance of Linux inside another application that is in turn running on Linux (or even inside another UML).

I agree with the comment made by another reviewer that it would have been helpful to spend more time covering how to bootstrap a UML instance. (Hint: Chapter 1.5 - The transition between chapter 1 and chapter 2 is somewhat abrupt.) However, there are numerous other resources covering how to get UML running initially, and the author more than makes up for this short-coming with other (and in my opinion, more interesting) topics.

In summary, it's much more than just another dry, narrowly-focused subject treatment, and I found the author's style and open discussion of design decisions refreshing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars User mode linux book review, January 6, 2007

By 

S. Passino - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: User Mode Linux® (Paperback)

User Mode Linux (UML) is one of several virtual operating system technologies offered today. Most of these technologies emulate a physical piece of hardware. On that hardware, an operating system of choice can be loaded. UML is different in that instead of creating a virtual piece of hardware, UML creates a virtual operating system.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The book consists of thirteen chapters. The first few chapters are a good overview of UML, covering the basics of creating and accessing a virtual instance of a linux operating system. The middle chapters go deeper into UML configuration, covering network configurations, multiple network interfaces and managing all of these virtual operating systems from the central host. The final chapters cover more advanced topics, compiling UML from source, performance tuning considerations, and examples of different ways to use UML. There is even a section on how to build a cluster of virtual linux servers using Oracle's ocfs2. An extremely interesting idea for companies or groups who would like to try out a cluster configuration without having to make a large investment in hardware.

PROS

I found this book interesting and filled with good information. It helps that the author of the book is also the creator of UML. It was nice to see a lot of information on not only how to do something, but also the reasons why things were done they way they were. I would recommend the book for anyone interested in virtualization technology in the open source arena.

CONS

There is not a lot of comparison to all of the other similar technologies like Vmware or Xen. I would not recommend this book to someone wanting to choose between the different technologies.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Learn User Mode Linux from its developer, April 27, 2006

By 

Anthony Lawrence "Unix, Linux and Mac OS X" (Middleboro, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: User Mode Linux® (Paperback)

UML is a great tool for all sorts of applications and projects, but the biggest attraction for me is the opportunity to learn more about the Linux kernel itself.

This book covers UML in depth, but also includes the thinking process Jeff Dike went through in its development and discusses the mistakes and trade-offs he made. You'll learn quite a bit about the kernel just from reading this and of course once you have it running, you can learn even more.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. My only complaint is that the book assumes your Linux came with UML installed and doesn't even tell you what RPM you need if it didn't - it's user_mode_linux and you can find that and everything else you need at [...]