UNIX Review: User-Mode Linux

“I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of running an operating
system under another operating system. It’s a cool hack to make a
piece of hardware do double (or triple, or quadruple…) duty by
running virtual machines. I’ve been hearing such good things about
User-mode Linux (UML) that I had to give it a whirl.

“There are a few rough edges with UML. Overall, however, UML is
a great piece of software that can come in very handy for Linux
admins and developers.

“Other than the fun factor of running Linux under Linux, there
are some very serious uses for UML. UML lets you tweak and torture
a virtual system without having to risk your own stable system or
maintain an extra system for testing. Instead, you can work with
one or more UML virtual machines and do all the damage you want
without worrying about trashing your system while testing device
drivers and so on. If your job requires testing the latest and
greatest development kernels, for example, UML is a great way to do
that without having to use an unstable kernel for your workstation.
There are a number of other testing scenarios where it’s very
helpful to be able to set up a slew of virtual machines instead of
using multiple physical machines…”

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