From: "Toby Corkindale" <[email protected]>
> On 5 November 2014 12:42, Peter Ross <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I have to admit not really to understand the "support this or that
>> virtualisation"
>>
>> A virtualisation presents a "virtual computer" and this may slightly
>> differ depending on the virtualisation solution.
>>
>> But the same goes for physical machines.
>>
>> And I have not read: "Product XY only works on Dell T610 and HP ML 150".
>> I
>> can install it on a "no name box" as well. Why not on any VM?
>>
>> The ERP solution [not Oracle, btw] I am dealing with in-house runs on
>> Tomcat. Tomcat and Java are designed to live "everywhere".
>>
>> Of course the software is certified on Linux X and Windows Y only..
>
> So, in theory virtualisation should be roughly the same everywhere.
> And something like the JVM is designed to work almost everywhere.
> And usually it all works OK.
>
> However sometimes you get bizarre incompatibilities -- the one I'm
> thinking of is OpenVZ and the JVM.
> I don't know why, but the jvm just doesn't work right under OpenVZ --
> it's a well-known issue.
> (And one which I believe points out that openvz has been flawed all
> along; I wouldn't trust *anything* under it as a result)

Oracle does not support containers, Avi pointed out.

In short, containers and Jails are not full virtualisation.

As an example, FreeBSD jails are having a problem with shared System V
memory:

jail(8) man page:

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=jail&sektion=8

allow.sysvipc
 A process within the jail has access to System V IPC
 primitives.  In the current jail implementation, System V
 primitives     share a single namespace across the host and
 jail environments,     meaning that processes within a jail
 would be able to communicate with (and potentially
 interfere with) processes outside of the jail, and in other
 jails.

Not that the default is 0(disabled):

"Some restrictions of the jail environment may be set on a per-
jail basis.  With the exception of       allow.set_hostname, these
boolean parameters are off by default."

If you really need to run multiple postgresql (e.g.) in various jails on
the same box you can run them with different UIDs (and enabling SysV
memory) but it makes security a "cooperative issue" - only recommended if
you control host and jail environment yourself (e.g. not a good idea for
web hosting)

The handbook writes about jails:

"Important:

Jails are a powerful tool, but they are not a security panacea. While it
is not possible for a jailed process to break out on its own, there are
several ways in which an unprivileged user outside the jail can cooperate
with a privileged user inside the jail to obtain elevated privileges in
the host environment.

Most of these attacks can be mitigated by ensuring that the jail root is
not accessible to unprivileged users in the host environment. As a general
rule, untrusted users with privileged access to a jail should not be given
access to the host environment."

I do not know this about OpenVZ (and in general Linux containers).

The documentation about Linux containers is a bit vague in this regard (or
I have not found the "ultimate answer" yet). One reason not to trust it
that much.

Here is one example about container issues mentioned (but not explained):

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/127001/linux-lxc-vs-freebsd-jail

"There are some known security issues with LXC that can be mitigated using
selinux, for example."

I actually would like to know what the "known security issues" are..

Cheers
Peter

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