Re: [Qemu-devel] Qemu sandbox for teaching

[Jerome Warnier <jwarnier@beeznest.net>]

Le samedi 28 mai 2005 à 14:13 +0100, Paul Brook a écrit :
> On Saturday 28 May 2005 13:42, Jerome Warnier wrote:
> > Does someone here have an idea on how to do the following using Qemu,
> > but I'm open to other suggestions:
> >
> > I would like to provide a UNIX CLI sandbox for users to poke around in a
> > UNIX course. It would be better if available from the web (preferably
> > without having to install anything on the users' PC), and Free (as in
> > free speach).
> > The problem is that I need to give them root access, or at least a
> > simulation.
> > It would be even better if we could for instance install RedHat in it,
> > but it's not really required.
> 
> It's not really answering your question, but qemu is probably OTT for this. If 
> I was setting this up I'd use UML and a java web based telnet/ssh client.
Well, I was thinking about what the snapshot feature of qemu could bring
me.

In fact, I thought about the following solutions:
- qemu (or whatever other virtualization system)
- chroot (or specifically dchroot in Debian) and remote telnet or ssh
access
- UML

Advantages of every solution:
- qemu virtualizes a complete machine, which means installation of an OS
is possible and it is pretty safe (security-wise) to setup
- chroot is fast to run and pretty safe
- UML is fast to run and pretty safe

Problems of every solution:
- qemu is slow, and a lot of virtual machines at the same time on the
same machine will slow it down and use too much memory, I think (I'm
talking about 10 people «playing» at the same time). Using only a
text-mode virtual machine may probably help, though
- chroot does not allow much and may take time to setup correctly
- UML is difficult to setup, and needs a kernel patch (even on 2.6?) to
work


> Paul
-- 
Jerome Warnier <jwarnier@beeznest.net>
BeezNest