Mixed Environment Linux with efficient execution (MELEE)
MELEE is a small kit of software which helps setting-up a PC or
server to run multiple Linux distributions effectively in parallel,
with access from one Linux system to another. It uses
application-level virtualisation rather than hardware
virtualisation.
MELEE is efficient compared with running several Linux virtual
machines in that (i) there is only one kernel and one process
scheduler, and no hypervisor, (ii) there is no processing overhead
or emulation or need for hardware assist, (iii) files on one system
can be shared within another system via simple bind-mounting, rather
than having to access via NFS or SAMBA even where they are local,
(iv) it is possible to invoke programs directly within one
distribution to run within another distribution.
Don't use MELEE when you want to divide your machine(s) into isolated
system instances which are unaware of each other's presence and cannot
communicate, except via a network.
That's what VM methods are good at,
and is the opposite of what we want to achieve with MELEE.
MELEE doesn't help when you want to run a virtual Linux within
Windows, or vice versa. It's a Linux-only solution.
Overview
MELEE makes use of the long-standing Unix chroot facility, combined
with the ability to bind-mount directories in several different
places in the base file tree. Binaries running within the chroot
make use of the run-time libraries of the image, rather than those
of the base system. The same one kernel provides the system hooks
for those run-time libraries, and kernels are backwards-compatible,
so a binary performs the same as if it was running natively on its
original system.
Example
We have a cluster and a set of desktop PCs
where the base system is Fedora 18 (at the time of writing), but
where there are
also available complete SL4, SL5, and SL6 images (where SL is
Scientific Linux, similar to CentOS and based on Red Hat Enterprise
Linux), as well as an earlier Fedora distribution and Ubuntu 12.
There's the opportunity to extend that to have a bigger set of
different sub-systems, including 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the
same distro, if we wanted them.
The distributions are located on the PC in subdirectories of /image,
like /image/sl58, /image/sl63, /image/u12, and so on.
To start a shell session in a distro image (say SL6) other than the
base image, the user types sl6, or
clicks on a panel icon which creates a window running the sl6
command. The sl6 command invokes the same shell as is
default for that user, but within that distro image.
To invoke a particular command in a different distro
environment, such as a firefox script for SL6 running within a
Fedora 18 base system, the user can type sl6 firefox,
and the corresponding version of firefox will be started within
an SL6 environment.
Also, a script which is headed by the string #!/bin/sl6, for example,
will be invoked in the context of the different distro.
Important files
The following files are useful in a MELEE context:
imageswitch.c: this source file, when compiled with the
supplied make-sysshell script, gives a binary which performs the
chroot to a different distribution image. It switches to the
compiled-in image directory, reverts privilege to that of the
issuing user, and changes directory to the same directory within the
image as that when invoked. Chrooting normally needs setuid
privilege (which is dropped by this binary as soon as possible).
imagemounts: this script, normally run once at boot time,
bind-mounts all the necessary file trees and system mounts (like
/proc) into the distribution images in /image.
Torque batch compatibility
The MELEE environment is compatible with and complementary to
the Torque batch facility,
in that it provides the initialised environments that can then be
utilised by Torque via its qsub -D option. For example, qsub
-D /image/sl63 myscript will run the script myscript within a
chrooted environment on a worker. Torque provides this chrooting capability
natively, and so there is no need for a MELEE binary based on
imageswitch to perform the chrooting. Normally, the ordinary user
will be protected from having to specify this option by virtue of
wrapper scripts, for example: qsub5, qsub6.
Index