FreeBSD OCI Container on Jails/Bhyve with Support for Podman
72 points
20 days ago
| 3 comments
| freebsdfoundation.org
| HN
freedomben
20 days ago
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One of my first thoughts was wondering why Bhyve would be needed if it works with Jails, here's the relevant answer from TFA:

> which would allow support for other operating systems besides FreeBSD in a container on a FreeBSD host

Seemless integration with Bhyve so you could run linux-based containers could be a really killer feature IMHO!

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tw04
20 days ago
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I don't know that you'd even need Bhyve for that - FreeBSD has a pretty robust linux compatibility layer.

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/linuxemu/

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BSDobelix
20 days ago
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>FreeBSD has a pretty robust linux compatibility layer.

Robust but not perfect, would you run MicrosoftSQL(the Windows version) on Linux with WINE?

However you still can try it with a LinuxJail, and yes the linux layer is pretty robust.

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pjmlp
20 days ago
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Actually that is kind of how SQL Server does run.

First of all, only the Linux containers are supported for SQL Server, using Windows containers has been deprecated, and no longer documented

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/quickstart-insta...

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/database-...

Secondly, the way SQL Server has been ported to Linux, is based on the pico processes technology, aka library OS, which is kind of how WINE works,

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/blog/2016/12/16/s...

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BSDobelix
20 days ago
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>Actually that is kind of how SQL Server does run.

Yes, I know (that's why I wrote "the Windows version"), but would you put it into production with your own WINE/Proton package?

>Secondly, the way SQL Server has been ported to Linux, is based on the pico processes technology, aka library OS, which is kind of how WINE works,

Yes, again, I know, and I think you know what I mean by my example, I had no other example of a major Microsoft dedicated application that came to mind. ;)

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szszrk
20 days ago
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I don't think it's fair to compare freebsd's Linux compatibility layer to Wine.

I've been running on freebsd a lot of Linux binaries of closed source software 20 years ago and it always worked flawlessly for me. Even desktop stuff like Opera (yes, the one with adds in main window). At the time Wine could run some more trivial programs sometimes, and usually crashed anyway. Wine improved a lot but IMHO it's still unfair to compare those.

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badgersnake
20 days ago
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There was a version of docker that worked like that many years ago. It died pretty quick, I think because it was a fork and keeping it up to date was pretty hard.
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soupbowl
20 days ago
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I did some minor testing with FreeBSD podman, it seemed ok. Now that FreeBSD 14.2 has been released I plan on moving some of my Linux podmans over to FreeBSD to see how well things are working.

I am also curious if we can use these smaller OCI images as normal thin jails, It seems like it from first glance.

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whalesalad
20 days ago
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Linked lightning talk introducing this. I have always had a curiosity around FreeBSD/jails. Will watch this tonight while the snow falls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pggcc6fi-ow
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