Discussion:
Use cases of Alpine Linux and Xen
Roger Pau Monné
2013-01-18 11:13:59 UTC
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Hello,

I'm planning to write a blog post about Alpine Linux and it's Xen
support on http://blog.xen.org if that's fine with everyone. Since
Alpine Linux is not as widely known as let's say Debian or Fedora I
would like to get some feedback from users that are actually using
Alpine Linux and Xen. Mainly I would be interested in the following points:

* Why did you choose Alpine Linux as your Dom0?
* What do you think are the benefits of using an Alpine Linux Dom0 over
other distributions?

If you would also like to contribute with specific use-cases or examples
where Alpine Linux Dom0 is a good choice I would also welcome them very
much.

Thanks, Roger.


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Der Tiger
2013-01-20 14:39:41 UTC
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Hi Roger,
Post by Roger Pau Monné
* Why did you choose Alpine Linux as your Dom0?
Before settling on Alpine Linux, I ran a comparison between 48 Linux or
FreeBSD based OS developed targeting (or at least supporting) SOHO
router hardware. I'm quite sure I've overlooked some, but if an OS is
hard to find it is most likely too new to be stable and/or has a small
group of followers and contributors, perhaps even too small to stay alive.

My personal main criteria were:

1) OS has to run on low-end machines (e.g. Intel Atom) for economic 24/7
availability. To reduce the hardware requirements, it has to be modular
with a small footprint base system.
2) There has to be an open and active group of developers. Any company
based, closed development won't cut it.
3) Keeping the OS up to date and installing software has to be easy, so
there has to be a packet manager or something similar and a large
software library with reasonable number of software packets available.
4) There has to be a self-explaining, web based GUI available for
configuration and maintenance. Adding my own programs and creating
extensions to the GUI for them has to be practicable.
5) The base system has to provide proper security like grsec/PAX or SELinux.

Alpine Linux was one of the very few OS that met all five criteria.
Post by Roger Pau Monné
* What do you think are the benefits of using an Alpine Linux Dom0 over
other distributions?
Even the base system installation of any major Linux distribution (e.g.
Fedora, Ubuntu) creates much more overhead and requires higher
performance hardware, than a smaller OS like Alpine Linux or Voyage
Linux, without any considerable benefit. The implementation and
distribution of bug fixes for any non-kernel related problem takes
forever in most popular Linux and FreeBSD distributions, while Alpine
Linux has a very active XEN users and developers group supplying both,
maintenance to XEN and some degree of support through the Alpine Wiki
and this mailing list.
Post by Roger Pau Monné
If you would also like to contribute with specific use-cases or examples
where Alpine Linux Dom0 is a good choice I would also welcome them very
much.
My Alpine Linux system centralizes a number of peripheral functions like
network routing and filtering (Privoxy), in-house, in- and outgoing
telephony with several extensions including a door intercom (Asterisk),
controlling the electric heating of the top floor of the building,
supervising the gas powered heating of the rest of the house as well as
the warm water supply (OWFS). Some of those functions have to be highly
available like the heating during winter, why changes to the related
software have to be done very cautiously, while other parts of the
installed software (e.g. Asterisk) require frequent updates to get rid
of security holes and annoying bugs.

It therefore is recommended to install the software required to be
highly available onto a virtual machine (DomU) in order to isolate it
from changes to the rest of the software. Further, if the Dom0 somehow
becomes inoperable, the DomU can easily be transferred to any other
system using the Alpine Linux XEN LiveCD in order to restore the highly
needed functions shortly.

Hope it helps, Tiger


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Florian Heigl
2013-01-20 16:38:06 UTC
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