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Remote unix Learning Environment (RULE)
RULE from a Technical Perspective
This page describes in a little more detail how RULE is implmented>
Operating System
RULE is implemented using FreeBSD 5.x
FreeBSD's jail functionality provides the core functionality RULE builds on to provide classes or virtual hosts available
through remote login via SSH.
While jail has been part of FreeBSD since the 4.0 release, RULE and the JHT that control the jailed hosts
provide access to jailed hosts in a convenient and user-friendly manner.
Virtual Disks?
The JHT uses FreeBSD's ability to attach filesystem image files to memory devices, which can then be mounted as regular disk
devices to give each virtual host it's own virtual disk. There are a number of advantages to using disk images instead of
directories on the host filesystem. A disk image has a finite size, meaning that once the user has consumed all the space
available on their disk image their virutal host will report it is out of disk space, rather than continue consuming space
on the primary host's filesystem. As all files that make up a virtual disk are actually inside a single file on the primary host
, creating, copying, moving and deleting virtual hosts is simplified significantly.
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