Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by vacri 4071 days ago
then you are doing containers wrong...

The old-school sysadmins I know scoff at Docker's idea of 'containers'. Linux containers were already a thing, and don't need an entire copy of an OS ported around with them. To them, containers are a way of enveloping a process to limit it, not a way of distributing packaged software. They may or may not be doing 'docker' right, but they certainly know what 'linux containers' are.

2 comments

Well I should have qualified it with 'docker containers'. But yeah, those that have been around long enough in Linux container land have all dealt with vserver, openvz, lxc, etc, and all of those carried around this 'entire copy' of an OS, per container (ignoring vserver's vhashify). Docker helps you to spin up N containers running all sorts of applications based on the single master image.

Docker, whether your view is good or bad, brings something more than just another container implementation to the table...

> Linux containers were already a thing, and don't need an entire copy of an OS ported around with them.

Neither do Docker containers. You can build off scratch and put the literal bare minimum you need in it. I've done it a few different times. It's rarely done because the time and effort almost never makes up for the complexity and cost, but if your old-school sysadmins are scoffing it's on them.

Response to exactly that idea from one of these guys: "Why do you need docker to just build an executable?"
Deterministic builds. Isolating shitty build scripts from my system.
I don't. But it helps make a straightforward deployable of highly coupled libraries and tools in a way that's more comprehensible to other people.

But I'll get off your lawn now.

Ain't my lawn; I consider myself a mid-range sysadmin. I stepped out of support and into sysadmin land about 4 years ago. But I know some 'from-the-birth-of-linux' guys, who live and breathe this stuff in a way I never will. When I get home from staring at terminals, I want to watch movies and play video games, not swear at something on a breadboard :)