The UML downloads are available from a number of mirrors:

UML Mirror

Location

This page will connect you to the mirror.

If you hate this new-fangled download page and want the SourceForge project download page back, click here .

First off, the host machine needs to be an i386 Linux box running 2.2.15 or later, or 2.3.22 or later (including any 2.4 kernel). If you have an earlier kernel, and for some reason you don't want to upgrade, then you can still run UML by applying this patch to it. But you should really get a more modern kernel.

Minimally, you need a UML kernel and a root filesystem to boot it on. Almost everyone should get the kernel by installing either the RPM or deb. These also provide a set of userspace tools, kernel modules, and documentation.

The tools aren't needed for basic use of UML, but they are needed for networking, managing COW filesystem files, and using the management console.

RPMs	File Type : RPM
Name	Release Date	Download Size (bytes)

debs are no longer available here, since there are now official UML debs in unstable. So, just point your apt.sources at either testing or unstable if it isn't already, and 'apt-get install user-mode-linux'.

Here are some URLs for people who want to point and click:

• http://packages.debian.org/user-mode-linux
• http://packages.debian.org/uml-utilities
• http://packages.debian.org/kernel-patch-uml

There are a number of bootable root filesystems available for download. They cover most of the major distributions and a number of more specialized, minor ones. They are compressed filesystem images and typically are downloads of tens of megabytes, uncompressing to several hundred megs.

If this is too large a download for you, the tomsrtbt filesystem is small enough to be reasonable for almost everyone. For its size, it provides an amazing number of tools. The other possibility is to generate your own filesystem. The mkrootfs script, which is provided in the packages, will produce a bootable filesystem from almost any RPM-based distribution media.

There are also a number of separate projects which will let you create your own filesystems from media. They are listed here. If you're an absolute rank UML beginning, downloading one of the preinstalled filesystems is the better way to go.

Matt Zimmerman has also made some Debian images available here . At this writing, there's a current snapshot of potato and one of woody.

Note : The SuSE filesystem is a non-devfs filesystem. If you use a kernel with devfs built in and enabled (as the ones from this site are), you need to add 'devfs=nomount' to the command line.

Filesystems	File Type : bzipped ext2 filesystem image
Name	Release Date	Download Size (bytes)

These are filesystems which boot up UML with exactly one service for the purpose of jailing that service (along with any unfriendly outsiders who manage to break into it).

Currently, we have only a DNS filesystem from Chris Reahard. See his description for what's in it and how to use it. More contributions are welcome.

Jail filesystems	File Type : bzipped ext2 filesystem image
Name	Release Date	Download Size (bytes)

If you are going to grab the standalone kernel or patch below, you want to pay attention to this section. Otherwise, if you install the RPM or deb, you can ignore it, since these utilities come with the packages.

This is a tarball of the sources for the UML utilities

• uml_mconsole
• uml_moo
• mkrootfs
• uml_net
• uml_switch

Build and install them with

make all

make install DESTDIR=/

from the top level directory.

Ocassionally, a new UML needs a new version of one of the utilities. So, if you don't install one of the packages, you should check the changelog to see if you need anything new, and, if so, grab, build, and install the tools from the tarball.

UML Utilities	File Type : bzipped source tarball
Name	Release Date	Download Size (bytes)

If you don't want to grab one of the packages, you can download the precompiled kernel binary. In this case, it's up to you to make sure you have the userspace tools you'll need, and to make sure that they are up to date with the kernel, since they change occasionally.

Also, see http://www.need2host.com:8080/uml/kernel/ where Daniel Morrigan is placing some kernels of his own (there appears to be one there at the moment). He also made an offer to set up a specify-your-UML-config-and-pick-up-the-kernel-later UML building service if there's enough interest. So, contact him at dmorrigan at peapod dot com if you'd be interested in this.

Kernels	File Type : bzipped ELF binary
Name	Release Date	Download Size (bytes)

This is the brand-new UML test suite. The main driver is test.pl, which uses the Perl modules UML.pm and UML/*.pm. The tests themselves are located under tests. Configuration is done in Config.pm. And that's all the documentation which exists at the moment.

Test Suite	File Type : bzipped tarball
Name	Release Date	Download Size (bytes)

If you want to build UML from source, you can get the patch here, or download the ac tree, which has UML in it already. The patch that's available from here applies against the appropriate Linus pool. It will also likely apply against nearby kernels, including his pre-patches, but there are no guarantees. See this page for more detailed instructions for building UML from source.

Again, if you go this route, you need to make sure that you have the tools you'll need to fully use UML.

The patch is updated most frequently. I will release a patch for every CVS update. These patches are named uml-patch-2.4.x-y.bz2. If you want the latest UML, the latest of these patches is what you should get.

Patches	File Type : bzipped patch
Name	Release Date	Download Size (bytes)