The User-mode Linux Kernel Home Page (via Mowser)

How you can help
Overview
Documentation
Utilities
Kernel projects

Screenshots
A virtual network
An X session

Transcripts
A login session
A debugging session
Slackware installation

Reference
Kernel switches
Slackware README

Papers
ALS 2000 paper (html)
ALS 2000 paper (TeX)
ALS 2000 slides
LCA 2001 slides
OLS 2001 paper (html)
OLS 2001 paper (TeX)
ALS 2001 paper (html)
ALS 2001 paper (TeX)
UML security (html)
LCA 2002 (html)
WVU 2002 (html)
Security Roundtable (html)
OLS 2002 slides
LWE 2005 slides

Fun and Games
Kernel Hangman
Disaster of the Month

The User-mode Linux Kernel Home Page

Run Linux inside itself

User-Mode Linux is a safe, secure way of running Linux versions and Linux processes. Run buggy software, experiment with new Linux kernels or distributions, and poke around in the internals of Linux, all without risking your main Linux setup.

User-Mode Linux gives you a virtual machine that may have more hardware and software virtual resources than your actual, physical computer. Disk storage for the virtual machine is entirely contained inside a single file on your physical machine. You can assign your virtual machine only the hardware access you want it to have. With properly limited access, nothing you do on the virtual machine can change or damage your real computer, or its software.

The new web site

First, visit the new, partly-completed UML site. It's not totally done, but does have more up-to-date pointers to downloads and more user-friendly directions than you'll find here.

The UML Book

It's out!

It's written by me, and covers UML pretty comprehensively.

Available from the publisher and from Amazon.

This web site

This page contains brief descriptions of how people are using User-Mode Linux. The kernel page has a brief description of the kernel, its capabilities, and how it makes use of the hosting kernel's resources. The download page tells you what you need in order to run the kernel and where to get it. The running it page describes how to run the kernel, what to do once it's running, and how to shut it down. For some fun with UML, see the Sysadmin Disaster of the Month contest where you will trash a UML system and figure out how to fix it. This page describes how to get the source and build it, plus how to compile and use kernel modules. Here is a screenshot of a two-machine virtual network, with one node running a local X server and the other displaying an xterm onto it. Rusty Russell wrote a nice HOWTO, which can be found here. Also see David Coulson's UML community site for news, forums, and lots of other stuff.

Plus, there's lots more! Look at that sidebar on the left and see all the stuff that hasn't been mentioned yet.

Examples

There are a number of pages showing the user-mode kernel in action:

A virtual network An X session A login session A debugging session

Search this site

Donations

You can make a donation to the UML project through PayPal, and help ensure that I can continue to spend time on it, by clicking on this button:

Sponsorships

Thanks to

Dartmouth ISTS and Bill Stearns for sponsoring the security work in UML Bill Stearns for many forms of support since nearly the start of the UML project. RidgeRun for sponsoring the floating point ptrace fixes The UML SMP and highmem work, and the existence of the 2.5 BK repositories were sponsored by Cluster Filesystems. Thanks to Steve Freitas, Harry Zink, and the PostNuke Project for donating an SMP box so that host SMP problems can be fixed. HP contributed a nice IA64 workstation to the UML project. Intel for hiring me in 2004 to work on UML full-time A donation from: Support Open Source - SEO Company encourages firms on the Internet to support the open source community.

If there's a UML feature that you need or a bug you want fixed now rather than when I get around to it, and you'd be interested in sponsoring the work, get in touch with me at jdike at karaya dot com.

Resources

This project is hosted at sourceforge.net, which provides a number of useful services:

This web site is hosted at sourceforge The project page , which contains pointers to everything associated with the project Mailing lists
user-mode-linux-devel - for discussion of the innards, code, algorithms, etc.
user-mode-linux-user - for discussion of the outards, questions about running the kernel, configuring it, etc.
Bug reports may be sent to either list.
Searchable list archives exist at MARC (uml-user, uml-devel) and gmane (uml-user, uml-devel). IRC (see www.irchelp.org/ for more information on IRC) - #uml on irc.oftc.net is where I hang out 2-3 days a week. It's good for general UML questions and chit-chat. #kernelnewbies on oftc.net is a also good place for UML questions and discussion that relate to kernel development in general.

Send any questions, comments, flames, etc to jdike at karaya dot com

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