[HN Gopher] Fakecracker: NetBSD as a Function Based MicroVM
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       Fakecracker: NetBSD as a Function Based MicroVM
        
       Author : yankcrime
       Score  : 107 points
       Date   : 2020-06-18 17:01 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (imil.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (imil.net)
        
       | winrid wrote:
       | NetBSD is so fun to play with. Highly recommended.
        
         | lbhdc wrote:
         | I don't really know much about NetBSD. Where is a good place to
         | jump in?
        
           | inetsee wrote:
           | The NetBSD Project has its own collection of tutorials here:
           | https://wiki.netbsd.org/tutorials/
        
           | bch wrote:
           | Start at the beginning, continue until the end, then stop.
           | 
           | NetBSD-9 was just released; grab appropriate install img[0]
           | and dive in!
           | 
           | When you need help or community, #netbsd on freenode[1] is
           | just a few keystrokes away.
           | 
           | [0] http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-9.0/
           | 
           | [1] irc.freenode.org w your favourite IRC client
        
       | api wrote:
       | I'd like to see a small lean kernel like NetBSD ported to WASM.
       | You could run services in the browser or in a relatively safe and
       | portable local WASM VM. Would be an interesting way to distribute
       | certain kinds of software. Performance wouldn't be up to par with
       | native, but it wouldn't be too bad.
        
         | gen3 wrote:
         | I was thinking the same thing. I didn't see the size of the
         | image after his optimizations anywhere.
         | 
         | I found a project that emulates an x86 processor, and they
         | already have two BSD images built. https://copy.sh/v86/
        
         | greenshackle2 wrote:
         | And then let's ship desktop apps in electron running NetBSD.
         | And we will finally have come full circle :)
        
       | hultner wrote:
       | Intersting, always fun to read some BSD content. One thing that
       | bothered me though is that no bootup times are specified anywhere
       | in the article which after all focuses on exactly this, it would
       | be very nice to see boot time of Fakecracker vs Docker vs NetBSD
       | amd64 w. bootloader (and unmodified), and compared to the minimal
       | Linux kernel menitoned in the begining.
        
         | flatiron wrote:
         | the animation at the bottom shows netbsd + nginx starting in 1
         | second
        
         | sigjuice wrote:
         | Docker is not exactly "booted" in the traditional meaning of
         | starting a (real or virtual) computer.
        
       | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
       | One limitation of this system as it currently exists seems to be
       | that you need a working i386 NetBSD host to built the filesystem.
       | It might not be worth the effort once pkgin gets involved, but in
       | theory I would expect this to be perfectly possibly to get
       | around; after all, NetBSD's own build.sh is perfectly happy to
       | build a full system image for ex. i386 NetBSD from source on ex.
       | an amd64 Linux host. Or, if you didn't want to deal with cross-
       | compiling, perhaps it would make things easier to build a
       | Fakecracker VM that itself builds root filesystems, analogously
       | to building docker images from a container using dind.
        
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       (page generated 2020-06-18 23:00 UTC)