Toro

Introduction

Toro is a unikernel dedicated to deploy applications as microVMs. Toro leverages on virtio-fs and virtio-vsocket to provide a minimalistic architecture.

Features

• Support x86-64 architecture
• Support up to 512GB of RAM
• Support QEMU-KVM microvm and Firecracker
• Cooperative and I/O bound threading scheduler
• Support virtio-vsocket for networking
• Support virtio-fs for filesystem
• Fast boot up
• Tiny image
• Built-in gdbstub

How try Toro?

You can try Toro by running the HelloWorld example using a Docker image that includes all the required tools. To do so, execute the following commands in a console (these steps require you to install before KVM and Docker):

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/torokernel/torokernel/master/ci/Dockerfile
sudo docker build -t torokernel-dev .
sudo docker run --privileged --rm -it torokernel-dev
cd examples/HelloWorld
python3 ../CloudIt.py -a HelloWorld

If these commands execute successfully, you will get the output of the HelloWorld example. You can also pull the image from dockerhub instead of building it:

sudo docker pull torokernel/torokernel-dev:latest
sudo docker run --privileged --rm -it torokernel/torokernel-dev:latest

You can share a directory from the host by running:

sudo docker run --privileged --rm --mount type=bind,source="$(pwd)",target=/root/torokernel -it torokernel/torokernel-dev:latest

You will find $pwd from host at /root/torokernel in the container.

How build Toro locally?

Execute the commands in ci/Dockerfile to install the required components locally. Then, Go to torokernel/examples and edit CloudIt.py to set the correct paths to Qemu and fpc. Optionally, you can install vsock-socat from here and virtio-fs from here. You need to set the correct path to virtiofsd and socat.

Run the HelloWorld Example

Go to examples/HelloWorld/ and execute:

python3 ../CloudIt.py -a HelloWorld

Run the StaticWebServer Example

To run the StaticWebserver, you require virtiofsd and socat. To compile socat, execute the following commands:

git clone git@github.com:stefano-garzarella/socat-vsock.git
cd socat-vsock
autoreconf -fiv
./configure
make socat

Set the path to socat binary in CloudIt.py and then execute:

python3 ../CloudIt.py -a StaticWebServer -r -d /path-to-directory/ -f 4000:80

You have to replace the /path-to-directory/ to a directory that containing the files, e.g., index.html. To try it, you can execute:

wget http://127.0.0.1:4000/index.html

The -f parameter indicates a forwarding of the 4000 port from the host to the 80 port in the guest using vsock.

Run the Intercore Communication example

This example shows how cores can communicate by using the VirtIOBus device. In this example, core #0 sends a packet to every core in the system with the ping string. Each core responds with a packet that contains the message pong. This example is configured to use three cores. To launch it, simply executes the following commands in the context of the container presented above:

python3 ../CloudIt.py -a InterCoreComm

You will get the following output:

Contributing

You have many ways to contribute to Toro. One of them is by joining the Google Group here. In addition, you can find more information here.

License

GPLv3

References

[0] A Dedicated Kernel named Toro. Matias Vara. FOSDEM 2015.

[1] Reducing CPU usage of a Toro Appliance. Matias Vara. FOSDEM 2018.

[2] Toro, a Dedicated Kernel for Microservices. Matias Vara and Cesar Bernardini. Open Source Summit Europe 2018.

[3] Speeding Up the Booting Time of a Toro Appliance. Matias Vara. FOSDEM 2019.

[4] Developing and Deploying Microservices with Toro Unikernel. Matias Vara. Open Source Summit Europe 2019.

[5] Leveraging Virtio-fs and Virtio-vsocket in Toro Unikernel. Matias Vara. DevConfCZ 2020.

[6] Building a Cloud Infrastructure to Deploy Microservices as Microvm Guests. Matias Vara. KVM Forum 2020.

[7] Running MPI applications on Toro unikernel. Matias Vara. FOSDEM 2023.

[8] Is Toro unikernel faster for MPI?. Matias Vara. FOSDEM 2024.