Ubuntu+1 inside a sandboxed partition

[Dmitrijs Ledkovs]

On 19/08/12 19:36, Dražen wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> is there a way to run the development Ubuntu version dual boot, but by
> using the OS installer (and other related stuff) from the stable version
> so that there is little or no chance of it damaging other partitions
> with the stable production installation?
> 
> I'd like to run an Ubuntu+1 version for development and testing
> purposes. Now, I prefer having a dual boot installation to VMs, because
> of the ability to test on actual drivers (which are often the cause of
> why I want to hack something in the first place). After reading the
> description of this method on the wiki page
> (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UsingDevelopmentReleases/OtherWays) it seems it
> has a major drawback because a bug inside the installer (or, I guess,
> parts of the OS related to mounting other partitions etc.) could cause
> the loss of data on the production installation, which is quite
> unacceptable even with backups, as it takes a lot of time to recover and
> get the system back to a usable state (especially if you have other OSs
> alongside Ubuntu).
> 
> What I'm wondering is if there is a way to run a development version,
> but with certain crucial parts that could tamper with other partitions
> taken from a stable release, where there is a higher level of confidence
> that it won't cause data loss on other partitions. This would in an
> essence be a sort of Ubuntu+1 installation sandboxed inside a single
> partition.
> 
> If something like this doesn't exist, would it be very complicated to
> create as, for example, an automatically generated remix? I think it
> would encourage many people to try out the development version on their
> own machines, detecting driver-related errors (which get masked by using
> VMs) much sooner. Also, it would allow developers to run a development
> version straight on their bare metal production machine, which would be
> a performance boost during their work.
> 
> Dražen Lučanin
> 
> 

One way to do it is with LXC containers. Your host is running 12.04 LTS,
yet you have containers for Quantal. These have isolated networking /
chroot, but they don't run their own kernel. It's faster than
virtualisation and a very lightweight, yet secure solution. You can
test/run pretty much anything but the kernel/x.server/drivers stack in them.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitrijs.