Sorry if this is a a crazy idea.....just be forewarned.... First, I would like to make a reference to VMWare's snapshot (name not important, emphasize the idea) feature - hopefully u are familiar with it. This is a feature whereby u can freeze the entire OS (kernel + userspace application running) and then later reload itself next time, continuing where it left off, without reboot from ground zero. Next, can I ask, is such a feature useful in Linux? Ie, able to restart the kernel + userspace application from where u left off, the last time round. Not JUST the normal suspend/resume feature, but more important able to CHOOSE among the different available images for u to resume on. Eg, u want to freeze the current 2.6.25-rc6 kernel, save it, and then restore back the 2.6.23-rc5 image, work on it, save it, and then restore the previous image again. All done without virtualization as in the VMWare sense - which really is CPU intensive and slow things down a lot. Now we can directly execute each OS kernel image on the CPU, and since saving and restoring is quite fast (eg, zipping up the entire physical memory before saving into permanent storage) - I supposed this will be much faster than the normal initialization/fsck work done normally....or did I missed out anything? Essentially, to reiterate the key idea: able to snapshot the current kernel+userspace permanent.....restore from another snapshot....and then switch back again if needed etc.....will the implementation be difficult...if not impossible???? -- Regards, Peter Teoh -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxx Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ
