I dont really know how many people would be interested, but I have set
up a cluster
of free-access user-mode-linux machines. To use one, you currently
need to go through a
bit of user account registration (select Just Interested as your programme).
Once done, you press a button to queue for the next available machine
and when it is available it is yours to boot, reboot, halt, and become
root on. You only get the machines for a short time period (free users
get a minimum of 20 minutes on completion of their registration
process).

The machines are available on http://linuxzoo.net

The site is more to do with learning system administration, and has a number of
interactive tutorials which can be followed, and which test your UML machine to
see if the question objectives have been achieved. Some material is
still being written.

I have >60 UML machines, although only 15 are available at this time
to free users.
I would be increasing this for the duration of the summer (while my students
are not making use of the system). I also expect another few server machines to
arrive over the next few months, which should boost my UMLs to >100.

You get a UML to yourself. Email is blocked, as is many privileged ports.
http is open, and you can use telnet and ssh. Network traffic is
logged, and CPU usage
is managed to some degree. Basically limitations are minimal, but play
fair. Dont
use it as a parallel processing farm or for recompiling the kernel. The ratio of
UMLs to real machines is between 7:1 and 15:1, depending on the machine.

My intention is to offer users a variety of distribution images to try.
I am working on gentoo and core3, but right now the site only has fedora core2.

Dont make me cry by breaking it! The site has been running in the
shadows for 9 months,
but perhaps now is a good time to share it a little more widely. It is
reasonably
reliable but it is free and thus the service is not guaranteed.

The most I have ever had on it was 55 simultaneous students (100 in
the class). In Oct I will have 160 in the class. Anyone got a farm
larger than 100 UMLs?

Thanks to everyone involved with UMLs who helped me get it running.
Enjoy.
G.

PS. If you like it I would be grateful if you could spread the URL around a bit.


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