I'm having trouble understanding the danger here.  This is already a
common hosting solution (albeit, not with Cygwin).  FreeBSD and Linux both
have software that let you run multiple virtual machines on the same
physical hardware.  And there's vmware of course.  IBM has
enterprise-class servers that can run hundreds or thousands of unique
instances of Linux (or AIX) on one server.  IBM calls this LPAR - Logical
Partitioning.  Sun also has something similar, although I don't remember
what they call their flavor.

Hosting companies like it because they can give a customer full control
over their virtual machine, and they can't influence any other customers.
You can buy 1 biggie-sized server and charge customers a premium rate for
"virtual server" instead of "virtual host".

This is actually more difficult to do mass-hacking versus virtual
webhosting with Apache or IIS.  Since you need to break into X machines to
deface X websites, rather than breaking into 1 machine to deface a bunch
of sites.  And since each machine is it's own instance of Linux, it will
likely be running different software and be patched at a different level.

Granted, you have the problem that you can take out all of these virtual
servers if the 1 machine goes down - but you have the same problem with
virtual webhosting already.  And you wouldn't be running 1000 instances of
Linux on a big Pentium box.  No, this would be a 32-way IBM p690, or a
106-way SunFire 15k (drool).  You need to lose a lot of components before
the whole system chokes.

> Vanishing websites at the click of the (X)
> Virus distributors, script kiddies, crackers of the worst kind could 
> really kick some serious butt. And with WiFi coming in to its own we 
> could have all sorts of problems.
> 
> Sam
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
> http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org
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> 

Adam Maloney
Systems Administrator
Sihope Communications


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