[fedora-virt] febootstrap purpose status

[Paul Lambert]

Can I get an explanation of the targeted users of this distro?  The 
reason I ask is twofold. 1) I am looking for a bare metal OS to base 
real time control on and 2) I believe that VMware has it right with 
respects to hypervisor architecture.  Again,  a bare metal host with the 
actual guest OS running the interface and application code.

My current configuration using Fedora 11 as the host and running WinXP 
as a guest is what I term the "workstation" mode.  The host OS still 
performs user interface and file storage functions for users.  This is 
the same as using VMware workstation.  The full hyperviser mode would be 
a minimum Fedora build that allows a command line only interface.  No 
graphics libraries or other user intereface systems.  This is 
essentially ESX.  I would create a Fedora 11 appliance and a WinXP 
appliance and import these through command line instructions.  (Or 
better yet, Fedora would release a distro that included installing the 
bare metal version and the full Fedora appliance.)  The Fedora guest 
then could connect back to the bare metal host to perform monitoring and 
VM management function (oVirt). 

I want this on my laptop.  Upgrading the host while it is also serving 
as a workstation is too risky and a lot of work to perform OS testing 
and evaluation.  It's too easy to copy out one's guest VMs and reload or 
upgrade the host.  Then when this activity is complete just reinstall 
the original host and VM appliances.  Backup and restore are much easier 
as well. 

The last I saw on the febootstrap size I believe it was just under 20 
mb.  This still seams extremely large for a bare metal system.  I need 
the Fedora filesystem with KVM and the hardware driver library.  How 
small can we go?  I would like to try this.

Thanks for any feedback and direction
Paul