Linux namespaces – the foundation of LXC

Namespaces are the foundation of lightweight process virtualization. They enable a process and its children to have different views of the underlying system. This is achieved by the addition of the unshare() and setns() system calls, and the inclusion of six new constant flags passed to the clone(), unshare(), and setns() system calls:

  • clone(): This creates a new process and attaches it to a new specified namespace
  • unshare(): This attaches the current process to a new specified namespace
  • setns(): This attaches a process to an already existing namespace

There are six namespaces currently in use by LXC, with more being developed:

  • Mount namespaces, specified by the CLONE_NEWNS flag
  • UTS namespaces, specified by the ...

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