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Here's a preview from my zine, How Containers Work!! If you want to see more comics like this, sign up for my saturday comics newsletter or browse more comics!

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### a container is a group of Linux processes

Illustration of a smiling stick figure with curly hair.

person: on a Mac, all your containers are actually running in a Linux virtual machine

panel 2

person: I started ‘top’ in a container. Here’s what that looks like in ps:

  • outside the container
    $ ps aux grep top USER PID START COMMAND root 23540 20:55 top bork 23546 20:57 top
  • inside the container $ ps aux | grep top USER PID START COMMAND root 25 20:55 top (root 23540 20:55 top and root 25 20:55 top are the same process!)

container processes can do anything a normal process can…

Illustration of a smiling stick figure with curly hair, and Linux, represented by its penguin mascot

person: I want my container to do X Y Z W! Linux: sure! your computer, your rules!

but usually they have restrictions

(there are drawings of locks on either side of the word “restrictions”)

Illustration of a container, represented by a box with a smiley face. Around it are arrows with the following labels: - different PID namespace - different root directory - cgroup memory limit - limited capabilities - not allowed to run some system calls

the restrictions are enforced by the Linux kernel

Linux: NO, you can’t have more memory!
person: on the next page we’ll list all the kernel features that make this work!

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