Show HN: Vpod – Tiny Linux sandbox running in WASM (github.com)

12 points by mavdol04 28d ago ↗ HN

Hi HN,

I spent the last few months reading the RISC‑V specification to build the lightest possible sandboxes. The idea behind a vpod is to quickly spin up a Linux sandbox from snapshots (Alpine by default) without any setup or subsystem required.

The trade-off for portability and security is raw CPU speed. So we don't expect it to match native workloads with Python or pip, for example.

More info is in the README https://github.com/capsulerun/vpod

Happy to answer any questions!

3 comments

[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 29.4 ms ] thread

spankalee 27d ago ↗

Do you think that once GCC gets a working Wasm backend[1], that it might be possible to build Linux for Wasm directly and skip the RISC-V VM?

[1]: https://www.phoronix.com/news/GCC-Steering-WebAssembly

mavdol04 27d ago ↗

With RISC‑V emulation we get the virtual hardware components we need to boot Linux like MMU, registers etc. So a GCC WASM backend could definitely help, but I'm not sure it could replace the whole emulation layer.

clapthewind 27d ago ↗

So we can run this on a browser? a demo on the github page would be great. combine it with an extension to support networking, and you have a winner.