Re: RFC: Self-snapshotting in Linux

["eric miao" <eric.y.miao@gmail.com>]

Hibernation maybe ... try "echo "disk" > /sys/power/state"

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 4:44 PM, Peter Teoh <htmldeveloper@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
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-- 
Cheers
- eric