Linux Container Primitives: cgroups, namespaces, and more!

Samuel Karp
Amazon Web Services
In this session, we’ll explore the different Linux primitives that are commonly used in implementing container runtimes. We’ll learn about the Linux primitives that underlie container runtimes like Docker, including cgroups, namespaces, and union filesystems. We’ll see how Docker uses these primitives, and how the OCI standard makes it possible to customize how your containers run. We’ll also discuss alternative container runtimes like CRI-O, rkt, and systemd-nspawn and what makes them different. This will be an interactive session with a live demo and open questions.

[@eliyahkaz]

this is the best explanation of cgroups i have seen so far, seeing things makes understanding them so simple 👍

[@timlind3129]

3 years later; this is still an excellent overview.

[@hacker2ish]

Best deep dive for Docker i have found so far

[@AndresRodriguez-nn3pw]

I am currently trying to understand cgroups and found this jewel. It makes the concept Crystal clear

[@cvical]

Super! A lot covered in 30+ mins. I needed to stop several times because it gold what’s in there.

[@kaneding9299]

I cannot explain how useful this is. Thank you sincerely.

[@sanikashah5755]

Awesome! Took long time to watch it, lot of information in 30 minutes. I would have to watch multiple times to understand it, since I am kind of new to this! Thanks for the demos as well. They make it easier to understand : )

[@kaidaniel4579]

By far the best (and there are many) explanation I could find on the internet. Detailed yet clear and great precise narration.

[@shakhawat41]

Advance level details coupled with demos - great job.

[@blumki]

Very intuitive. Must watch for all the software engineers working in the current virtual software world

[@zadspecial]

Great demos and explanations!

[@lienecirule4342]

Eye opening video. Advanced and most importantly - understandable.

[@davidkillmon7242]

This is such an awesome explanation! Thanks Sam!

[@kirillsaltanov4586]

One of the best video i ve seen about cgroups

[@Test-dp1ib]

1:20 Container primitives
2:20 Control groups
10:13 Namespaces
20:40 Container image
31:00 Container runtimes

[@TheNullBox]

the introduction to cgroups were great.

[@vagueanxiety42]

thanks! it is packed with info and I had to pause multiple times to digest it. (I was a little confused by unshare syscall and unshare util....

[@shulyakav]

Excellent! Thank you, Sir.

[@TheDiveO]

minor correction: the procfs links to namespaces aren't symbolic links, even as they look like them. They're something else because they have a reference counted relation to the nsfs where the namespace inodes (numbers) are allocated and released. By bind mounting these references, you can keep process-less namespaces alive, which you cannot do using symbolic links: the namespaces would be garbage collected.

[@thebsv]

This was excellent. Thank you!

[@icodevpi]

Thank you very much, great content.

[@erickmanuelbazansalinas9705]

thank you sir!, this has been a great explanation!

[@mohammadmottaghi4369]

Nice Nice ! Good job !
minor improvement would be to highlight the dir-names during your demo so people can spot them faster.

[@ankk98]

Need to watch it again with focus

[@rohitmishra6402]

To execute redis binary on the host, is it necessary to enter mount ns? What about just doing sudo /proc//exe without nsenter, it does the same, because exe is really a symbolic link to the redis-binary on the container file system, amazing video in between, so good to watch with everything explained clearly and crisply.

[@mads7401]

Thanks, great explanation :)

[@carloszavaleta]

this was awesome - thanks!

[@tianhepeng9162]

I can only understand some about the cgroup parts. The rest are too unfamiliar for me. You guys can understand all 3 sections?

[@tigrangevorgyan3584]

Thanks! This was useful to me!

[@kirillsaltanov4586]

If it is possible please provide the same style video about hooks for the container, how play on them. thanks

[@friedbrainz7998]

Bit late, but I loved your video.

[@kaveh6161]

That was awesome 🤗

[@fsamobby]

wow that's kinda lit!!

[@imagineabout4153]

I cannot explain how useful this is. Thank you sincerely.

[@clee7408]

Excellent!

[@RuskinBoris]

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[@LeoniaDuracher-c7g]

Cronin Locks

[@JudithWetenkamp-x5z]

Hettinger Oval

[@khongmunhing6948]

Thanks. I love your explanation. I give me to understand more. Do you have your own youtube channel that I can subscribe it?

[@EliotChristine]

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[@OCaseyAlvin]

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[@DefoeWillie]

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[@user-bh2rd1dz1z]

Reading from a script and no explanations? I can do that too. If I put each of your chapters into chatGPT I get more informative explanations than this mess of a presentation...

[@marcello4258]

super valuable video! thanks a lot

[@ArchonLicht]

Awesome talk, thank you very much!