MirageOS
tags :: Operating-System, Kernel, libOS
- source
- DEVONthink
- source
- online pdf
Motivation
The shift to single-purpose appliances
- A cloud VM today running a full kernel but usually with one primary application
- Application initialized everytime VM booted
Limitations of current OS
- The modern Hypervisor provides resource abstraction flexibly changing memory, cores, VMs
- most OS can not utilize it fully
- Extra Load-Balancers are used by systems to achieve flexile VM spawning
- traditional OS are not optimized for quick booting and small size Load-Balancers may keep some idle VMs
MirageOS
libOS: a whole program is a whole operating system
- An application consisted of serveral independent unikernels, like a Distributed-System
- Protection Boundaries pushed to lowest hardware layers
- a set of libraries: interact with drivers, network protocols
- a set of policies: enforce Access Control and isolation
- Advantage
- allow applications directly interact with hardware without moving data between kernel/user spaces
- Drawbacks / Chanllenge
- strong isolation between unikernels is tricky
- use hypervisor spawning VMs to achieve isolation
- device driver needed to be rewritten
- depend on hypervisor to drive real hardware
- require much more VMs running
- properly create a modular abstraction of system and user stack in a single manageable structure
- strong isolation between unikernels is tricky
Stronger programming abstraction with high-level languages
- static type checking eliminate more memory error such as overflows
- automatic memory management
- modules
- metaprogramming unify config file and code at compilation time
Prototype
- Written in high-level languages
- Single virtual address space running only the runtime
- Compiling links all together into a single object file
- minimum runtime provide booting support and garbage collector
- configure files
- source code
- all dependent libraries tracked explicitly
- Develop in *nix environments and run in MirageOS
