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BrandZ in the press | 12/09/2007

It's not really a review, but BrandZ got a positive mention at ServerWatch.

BrandZ has integrated into the Solaris gate | 09/12/2006

As of about 2AM (EDT) last night, BrandZ is in the mainline Solaris tree. Barring any hideously embarrassing disasters, it will be available in the snv-49 release.

Thanks to everybody who has used and tested BrandZ as a pre-integration project, and for all the feedback you've sent in the past 10 months or so.

  • The BrandZ team
>Event: putback-to
>Parent workspace: /ws/onnv-gate
> (elpaso:/ws/onnv-gate)
>Child workspace: /net/tread/export/nils/brandz-putback
> (tread:/export/nils/brandz-putback)
>
>Comment:
>PSARC/2005/4 71 BrandZ: Support for non-native zones
>6374606 ::nm -D without an object may not work on processes in zones
>6409350 BrandZ project integration into Solaris
>6455289 pthreadsetschedparam() should return EPERM rather than panic libc
>6455591 setpriority(3C) gets errno wrong for deficient privileges failure
>6458178 fifofs doesn't support lofs mounts of fifos
>6460380 Attempted open() of a symlink with the ONOFOLLOW flag set returns
>        EINVAL, not ELOOP
>6463857 renice(1) errors erroneously
>
>Files:
>update: usr/closed/cmd/fs.d/nfs/lockd/lockd.c
>update: usr/closed/lib/libci18n/common/setlocale.c
>update: usr/closed/uts/common/klm/lmsubr.c
[…[
>rename from: usr/src/lib/libzonecfg/zones/SUNWdefault.xml
>         to: usr/src/lib/brand/native/zone/SUNWdefault.xml
>
>Examined files: 441
>
>Contents Summary:
> 232 create
> 207 update
> 2 no action (unchanged)
> 17 differentiate child
>
>Names Summary:
> 2 renamed
> 234 update parent's name history
> 232 update children's name history

brandz-discuss mailing list brandz-discuss at opensolaris dot org

BrandZ/29 available: now with audio | 12/23/2005

Ordinarily when news breaks after 5:00 (EST) on a friday, it's because the breaker has something to hide. When that friday precedes a major holidy, that is even more true.

Today however, I bring you tidings of great joy: brandz_29 is now ready.

This release fixes many BrandZ bugs (listed below) and brings us into sync with build 29 of OpenSolaris.

Among the apps enabled by these bugfixes are: 

    sshd
    vncserver
    install for CentOS 3.6


In addition, audio support is now available in Linux zones.  Instructions
for adding audio devices to your linux zone are now in the BrandZ install
doc.  Applications that have been successfully tested with this support
are:
    xmms
    flash plugin
    Skype
    Quake   (you need Solaris opengl libraries for your videocard for
             acceptable video performance)


Bugs fixed:


6319911 mlock syscall should make addr argument page aligned automatically
6329019 read should fail and set correct errno if let it read a directory
    or given a bad buffer pointer.
6329076 readv should return -1 and set EFAULT if be passed to wrong vector
    buffers args
6329081 readv should return -1 and set EISDIR if it is required to read
    from a directory fd
6338715 termios : general terminal interfaces all set wrong errno if they
    are passed a plain fd
6345956 l2stermio dereferenced a NULL pointer
6360001 librtlddb gets its locking wrong
6362103 need to be more strict with LXSTRICT
6362289 ldd and linker run from cli dump core on centOS distrib
6363589 gettimeofday() core dumped with an invalid buffer.
6363963 building top from the source fails
6364060 need support for statically linked executables
6364247 heap in lx processes crept back down to 0x1000
6365349 isatty() and LXSTRICT_IOCTL should get along better
6365600 whitebox 3.0 and centos36.distro need work
6365690 lx zones without audio will fail to shutdown
6365721 Can't ssh in to branded zone as non-root
6366309 vncserver can't accept connections

The BrandZ Community Is Open For Business | 12/13/2005

Welcome to the BrandZ Community!

Today we are opening the Branded Zones (BrandZ) community and starting to move the BrandZ development to opensolaris.org. You can find the community at:

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/brandz

There is a new brandz-discuss forum available at:

http://opensolaris.org/os/discussions/

Blog entries about BrandZ can be found at http://blogs.sun.com, and will also be collected on the BrandZ community page.

BrandZ is a technology that extends the zones infrastructure to allow for the creation of "non-native" zones. Non-native is a deliberately ambiguous term, as we are trying not to let our preconceived notions of the technology limit its usefulness.

The first brand we are developing under the BrandZ umbrella is 'lx', a brand that supports the execution of 32-bit x86 Linux applications on a x86/x64 machine running Solaris Nevada. Specifically, the lx brand allows the user to install a complete CentOS or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.x distribution in a zone. When the zone is booted it will still be running the Solaris kernel under the hood, but the userspace environment will include nothing but Linux software from init(1M) on up.

In theory the BrandZ infrastructure could also be used to create other types of zones. One such example would be a GNU Solaris brand, which runs Solaris binaries but has the standard utilities replaced by their GNU equivalents. Other possible uses would be the creation of zones for running FreeBSD or Darwin x86 environments. Because this technology is being made available via the OpenSolaris community, you as a community member will be able to help create these or other brands if so inspired.

BrandZ and the lx brand will be integrated into Nevada and a Solaris 10 update, and will be released as "Solaris Containers for Linux Applications". That integration date is still months away, so the source code for BrandZ and the lx brand is available on the BrandZ community page, but it is not yet part of the mainline OpenSolaris source tree.

The key reason for releasing this as a work-in-progress is to get community feedback on the infrastructure. Our primary focus to this point has been on supporting the lx brand, but we want to be sure that the infrastructure we develop is general enough to support a variety of different brands. Our hope is that the people most likely to use this infrastructure in the future are already participating in the OpenSolaris community, and will be able to identify any limitations in BrandZ while there is still plenty of time for us to address them.

This is an experiment for the BrandZ team, and to some extent for Solaris in general. This is the first time we have opened up the source to a project at such an early stage of development.

For the immediate future, technical limitations will require us to do the bulk of the ongoing BrandZ development behind the Sun curtain. We will release snapshots on a regular basis, but we will not be able to roll each putback out individually. If you are interested in participating in the development of the infrastructure or the lx brand, we will certainly do what we can to make that as easy and productive as possible. There are plans in the works to bring a full-fledged source code management system to opensolaris.org. When that system is in place, we will reevaluate how we approach our day-to-day development.

Many thanks to our management for supporting this experiment and to the OpenSolaris team for helping us get this endeavour off the ground.

  • The BrandZ team