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Downloads
The UML downloads are available from a number of mirrors:
This page will connect you to the Dartmouth ISTS
mirror.
If you hate this new-fangled download page and want the SourceForge
project download page back, click
here
.
First off, the host machine needs to be an i386 Linux box running
2.2.15 or later, or 2.3.22 or later (including any 2.4 kernel). If
you have an earlier kernel, and for some reason you don't want to
upgrade, then you can still run UML by applying
this
patch
to it. But you should really get a more modern kernel.
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The recommended installation
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Minimally, you need a UML kernel and a root filesystem to boot it on.
Almost everyone should get the kernel by installing either the RPM or
deb. These also provide a set of userspace tools, kernel modules, and
documentation.
The tools aren't needed for basic use of UML, but they are needed for
networking
,
managing
COW filesystem
files
, and using the
management console
.
debs are no longer available here, since there are now official UML
debs in testing and unstable. So, just point your apt.sources at either
one, and 'apt-get install user-mode-linux'.
Here are some URLs for people who want to point and click:
There are a number of bootable root filesystems available for
download. They cover most of the major distributions and a number of
more specialized, minor ones. They are compressed filesystem images
and typically are downloads of tens of megabytes, uncompressing to
several hundred megs.
If this is too large a download for you, the tomsrtbt filesystem is
small enough to be reasonable for almost everyone. For its size, it
provides an amazing number of tools.
Another possibility is to generate your own filesystem. There are a
number of separate projects which will let you create your own
filesystems from media. They are listed
here
. If you're an
absolute rank UML beginner, downloading one of the preinstalled
filesystems is the better way to go.
Matt Zimmerman has also made some Debian images available
here
. At this writing, there's a current snapshot of potato and
one of woody.
This list contains a sample of the most popular filesystem images. To
see the full selection, click the the "whole list" link at the bottom
of the table.
These are filesystems which boot up UML with exactly one service for
the purpose of jailing that service (along with any unfriendly
outsiders who manage to break into it).
Currently, we have only a DNS filesystem from Chris Reahard. See his
description
for what's in it and how to
use it. More contributions are welcome.
If you are going to grab the standalone kernel or patch below, you
want to pay attention to this section. Otherwise, if you install the
RPM or deb, you can ignore it, since these utilities come with the
packages.
This is a tarball of the sources for the UML utilities
Build and install them with
make all
make install DESTDIR=/
from the top level directory.
Ocassionally, a new UML needs a new version of one of the utilities.
So, if you don't install one of the packages, you should check the
changelog to see if you need anything new, and, if so, grab, build,
and install the tools from the tarball.
If you don't want to grab one of the packages, you can download
the precompiled kernel binary. In this case, it's up to you to make
sure you have the userspace tools you'll need, and to make sure that
they are up to date with the kernel, since they change occasionally.
Also, see
http://www.need2host.com:8080/uml/kernel/
where Daniel Morrigan
is placing some kernels of his own (there appears to be one there at
the moment). He also made an offer to set up a
specify-your-UML-config-and-pick-up-the-kernel-later UML building
service if there's enough interest. So, contact him at
dmorrigan at peapod dot com if you'd be interested in this.
This is the brand-new UML test suite. The main driver is test.pl,
which uses the Perl modules UML.pm and UML/*.pm. The tests themselves
are located under tests. Configuration is done in Config.pm. And
that's all the documentation which exists at the moment.
If you want to build UML from source, you can get the patch here, or
download the ac tree, which has UML in it already. The patch that's
available from here applies against the appropriate Linus pool. It
will also likely apply against nearby kernels, including his
pre-patches, but there are no guarantees. See
this page
for more
detailed instructions for building UML from source.
Again, if you go this route, you need to make sure that you have
the tools you'll need to fully use UML.
The patch is updated most frequently. I will release a patch for
every CVS update. These patches are named uml-patch-2.4.x-y.bz2. If
you want the latest UML, the latest of these patches is what you
should get.
Here are the 2.4 patches. If you're not into helping the kernel
hackers track down bugs, then this is the list you want.
These are the 2.5 patches. You probably only want to grab this if you
know you want to play with the 2.5 kernel. If not, then see the 2.4
patches.
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