4

My (small) company uses an out-of-date linux (centos) software stack to run a proprietary software on a small cluster. Understandingly, IT is reluctant to upgrade since everything works now.

I'd like to do some performance tests on these machines and plan to install a lot of software that shouldn't interfere with the production root. It also includes compiling scientific packages and therefor I need up-to-date libraries. One possiblity is to install an entire up-to-date root in a different location and chroot into it.

My question is: How will this impact the performance of the tools running inside the chroot? Are there any benchmark references available? Is this technique widespread/disadvantegous/dangerous? Other ideas? See also my related question.

Improve this question
1
  • Only root can use chroot. If you can become root, then this is a good approach. Commented Apr 2, 2012 at 23:20

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
6

A chroot should not impact performance. I haven't heard of any benchmark on it because it's really just a mapping between two spaces.

Anyway, for your problem, maybe it should be better to use something like LXC. Instead of moving somethings working, you can simply create a LXC and do your stuff inside this LXC. LXC is far better than chroot and has really less drawback.

You can see it like a chroot v2.0. As far as I know, it should works well on CentOS 5.X.

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    Has LXC no performance hit? Commented May 22, 2019 at 19:11
1

Instead of chrooting, why don't you take advantage of environment modules (something you'll see on nearly every linux cluster these days), and install the software to an alternative location?

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.