
Docker on FreeBSD - zdw
https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker
======
vezzy-fnord
The FreeBSD people seem to be on a roll when it comes to porting things. They
mention a 64-bit Linux compatibility layer they recently rolled out in this
post. But in addition, some iXsystems employees have ported much of the OSF
Mach kernel (sans memory object/external pager interface) as a module, plus
partial or full implementations of XPC, libdispatch, ASL (Apple System
Logger), liblaunch and other facilities just so they can run the low-level
Darwin/OS X userspace and launchd, especially. FreeNAS then wrote Cython
bindings to all this for use in their system services. This is all in feature
branches atm, but it should be rolling out soon enough.

It's insane.

~~~
ObviousScience
To be honest, I think OpenBSD is ahead on some fronts (research on security
mechanisms, for instance), but the reason that I tend to use FreeBSD is that
it actually works with software packages.

So the computers are based on FreeBSD (which manages the hypervisor -- and
soon container daemon!), and appliances only are based on OpenBSD.

Compatibility ftw.

~~~
noinsight
> it actually works with software packages.

Well I don't know about that. I can't open Settings in Chromium at all
anymore, the whole browser crashes. It also constantly uses 100% CPU for
something so with Chromium open my load is always >1.

In VirtualBox none of the file open dialogs work.

If I switch to a console from X the whole screen glitches and gets stuck, I
have to SSH in to restart/stop X.

Suspend doesn't work for me.

So yeah, it doesn't work on the desktop as well as Linux does. Haven't had any
problems with it as a server though.

~~~
swills
The Chromium issue was fixed recently. Try updating your Chromium to at least
43.0.2357.132.

The VirtualBox issue is long standing, it's caused by the fact that vbox is
setuid. Try this:

env KDE_FORK_SLAVES=1 VirtualBox

~~~
noinsight
Thanks, that fixed it.

------
arh68
On a related note, if you've got a free hour, there was a recent talk at
BSDCan 2015 by Maciej Pasternacki on _Jetpack, a container runtime for
FreeBSD_

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8phbsAhJ-9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8phbsAhJ-9w)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ74mgkzLxc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ74mgkzLxc)

------
lifeisstillgood
I just assumed we would not do docker because we have had jails for so long.
In fact, ZFS and jail _is_ docker no? I admit no familiarity with docker
(played with LXC years ago and thought - gosh it's like jail! :-)

~~~
icebraining
Docker is a management tool for the underlying jail-like features implemented
by the kernel (cgroups, mainly). There's no reason why it can't be used to
manage *BSD jails, ie., create jails from Dockerfiles, download jail templates
from a public repository, etc.

~~~
AdieuToLogic
> Docker is a management tool for the underlying jail-like features
> implemented by the kernel...

ezjail[1] manages FreeBSD jails quite nicely too. Paired with ZFS, the GP
makes a solid case IMHO.

1 - [https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/jails-
ezjail.html](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/jails-ezjail.html)

------
davorb
I moved from FreeBSD on a server _two days ago_ , because it lacked Docker-
support. Kicking myself in the foot right now...

~~~
tshtf
Probably a good idea for a production server. From FreeBSD: _Docker on FreeBSD
should be considered experimental._

~~~
geggam
_Docker in Production should be considered experimental_

There ...fixed that for you

------
oldsj
I really like a lot of things about FreeBSD and would love to try it in the
cloud but I feel like I'm missing something? Running FreeBSD on top of ZFS
seems to be the smart way to go and yet this requires 1GB of ram minimum. If I
spin up an instance of Ubuntu using ext4 by default, the OS uses around 50Mb
of ram total. I feel like only the big kids who run on dedicated servers or
who are paying for a larger instance get to use FreeBSD.

~~~
xenophonf
There's nothing wrong with UFS+SUJ. FreeBSD is awesome for a lot more reasons
than just ZFS, and it works well in low memory environments (assuming that
you're willing to tweak the kernel/installation a little bit---for example,
see
[https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/nanobsd/index.html](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/nanobsd/index.html)).
That said, the smallest current generation instance from Amazon comes with 1
GB RAM, which is more than enough memory to experiment with everything FreeBSD
has to offer.

~~~
oldsj
Good point - I just wanted to try out BSDploy -
[http://docs.bsdploy.net/en/latest/](http://docs.bsdploy.net/en/latest/) \-
and found I had to use ZFS

~~~
xenophonf
Hey, that's neat. Thanks for the link!

------
ukaaay
I hope Sony will be implementing this with the PS4 for running an emulator of
the PS3 for backwards compatibility in response to Xbox Ones recent emulation
implementation.

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mbesto
Does this mean we'll expect a native port on Mac OS X soon? :)

~~~
wmf
No, since it uses FreeBSD features that are not in OS X.

