Chromium OS - SmartOS (previously known as OpenSolaris) KVM zone image (boot process)...

[Marc Edwards]

Hello, Chromium OS community,

DISCLAIMER:  I am NOT an OS kernel developer.  I have only use-case exprience with Chrome OS on Chromeboxes and Chromebooks. Therefore, please excuse my lack of module level understanding of Chrome OS.

I am working on the following system configuration:

1. HW:  Intel NUC D54250WYKH (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/nuc/nuc-kit-d54250wyk.html)
2. OS:  SmartOS (https://smartos.org/)

SmartOS is a server OS and not intended to be run in a "desktop" mode, i.e. GNOME, KDE, Chrome OS desktop, etc.  KVM has been ported to SmartOS.  Therefore, guest OSes can be run in "KVM zones", i.e. Ubuntu installed with the GNOME desktop.  From the NUC 's SmartOS console, I can SSH into a KVM zone and the "startx" to initiate the GNOME desktop on Ubuntu, for example.

On my Ubuntu 15.04 workstation, I have installed all of the Chromium OS dev tools and have created a clean build from scratch.  I have converted the build image into a Chromium OS KVM RAW image.  I have tested that Chromium OS KVM image in "kvm" on my Ubuntu workstation. The Chromium OS image boots fine. I was able to log into the Chromium OS just as on my Chromebox.  Everything looks good.

Now, I scp'd the Chromium OS KVM RAW image to my SmartOS NUC.  I have created a SmartOS KVM VM that is essentially just an empty ZFS zvol dataset.  I am presently "dd'ing" the RAW KVM into the ZFS VM zvol.  The "dd" process is kind of slow for the 7.8 GB Chromium OS image restore.  It should be completed in the morning.

What I am coming to this Chromium OS community for is to kindly guide me relative to the Chromium OS desktop boot process on my SmartOS NUC.  My use-case is that I want to be able to start up to 4 SmartOS KVM Chromium OS zones, with each zone running the Chromium OS desktop. The user will then "jump" between the 4 Chromium OS KVM zone desktops with keystrokes (Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2, etc).  Each Chromium OS KVM is intended to be an isolated & independent KVM that can have separate OpenVPN connections. Essentially, the SmartOS NUC is a "micro cloud" client on which the user can run multiple Chromium OS KVM zones that would have their own private network connections, i.e. virtualizing multiple Chrome devices in a single NUC.

The default mode for Chromium OS is to boot directly into the desktop mode.  I know there is a way to drop into a developer Chromium OS shell prompt. Booting the Chromium OS into the SmartOS KVM zone should work, but setting up the GRUB properly to allow me to "switch/login" into the Chromium OS KVM zone to then see the desktop is just not clear to me.  If I could boot Chromium OS into a command prompt and then SSH into the Chromium OS KVM zone and then start the desktop, then I can get my head around this boot model.  What I would prefer is to log into the SmartOS NUC...start each of the Chromium OS VMs one at a time, and then "keystroke" (Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2, etc) over to the the respective Chrome OS desktop.  

I would very much like to hear from the Chromium OS developers here on how you would approach this particular use case.

Most kind regards, Marc