My Geeky Page
by Guillaume Chazarain

Untie

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Untie is a small tool used to create namespaces and lauch processes in them. It uses Linux’s virtualization features. Basically it allows to call clone(2) with any flag as parameter. Note that superuser privileges are needed to create namespaces.

Here is a sample usage with the mount namespace:

[root ~]# untie -h
untie 0.3

Usage: untie [OPTIONS]... [COMMAND]...

  -h, --help               Print help and exit
  -V, --version            Print version and exit
      --mount              New mount namespace  (default=off)
      --uname              New uname  (default=off)
      --ipc                New IPC context  (default=off)
      --mask=MASK          Pass user defined flag
      --chroot=DIRECTORY   Chroot in the specified directory
      --uid=UID            Change to the specified UID
      --username=USERNAME  Change to the specified username
      --gid=GID            Add the specified GID
      --groupname=GROUP    Add the specified group
      --daemonize          Run as daemon  (default=off)
      --alarm=SECONDS      Set an alarm after the specified delay
      --nice=NICE          Run as the specified nice level
      --sched=SCHED        Use the specified (possibly RT) scheduling policy
      --schedprio=PRIO     Set the priority according to the given scheduler
[root ~]# mkdir dir1 dir2
[root ~]# touch dir1/file1 dir2/file2
[root ~]# untie --mount

A new shell has been spawned by untie

[root ~]# mount --bind dir1 dir2
[root ~]# ls dir1 dir2
dir1:
file1

dir2:
file1
[root ~]# exit

Back to the original namespace

[root ~]# ls dir1 dir2
dir1:
file1

dir2:
file2
[root ~]#

In this "demo" a new mount namespace is created and a bind mount is made in this new namespace. This mount is invisible to other namespaces. Leaving the namespace destroys it and cancels the mount.

Download

Untie is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL version 2 or (at your option) any later version.

The latest version is Untie 0.3 (NEWS), available here : untie-0.3.tar.bz2 or untie-0.3.tar.gz.

RPMS:

Freecode project page to stay informed: http://freecode.com/projects/untie.

Git repository hosted on repo.or.cz. To get a snapshot of untie with a complete history, use the following command:

git clone git://repo.or.cz/untie.git

Please contact me for any suggestion, problem, feedback…

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