OS-Level Container for Unmet Software Prerequisites
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Software installation procedures often fail when the operating system does not support necessary prerequisites, requiring manual intervention and potential hardware instability, especially when installing on unsupported OS versions.
Innovation Solution
A method using operating system level virtualization to set up a container with required components, allowing the software to be installed within this container and providing access information, thereby ensuring prerequisites are met without the need for complete system virtualization or manual searches.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a prerequisite checking is performed before software installation, then the reliability of software execution is improved, but the installation procedure stops when prerequisites are not met, reducing productivity
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs prerequisite checking in advance before the actual software installation, identifies missing components, and automatically installs them through container creation. This preliminary action ensures that when the main software installation proceeds, all prerequisites are already satisfied, preventing installation failures and improving both reliability and productivity.
2Reliability
If the operator manually installs the correct operating system on another version or computer, then the software can execute reliably, but the time and complexity of the installation process increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the operating system environment into isolated containers for different software applications. Each container encapsulates the specific OS version and prerequisites needed by a particular software, allowing multiple OS environments to coexist on a single physical system. This eliminates the need to install entire operating systems on separate computers while ensuring reliable software execution.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces virtualization technology as an intermediary layer between the physical hardware and the software application. This virtualization layer creates virtual operating systems that mediate between the underlying hardware and the software requiring specific OS prerequisites, enabling software to run reliably without manual OS installation on separate machines.
3Adaptability or versatility
If a virtualization using a hypervisor is used to create separate operating system environments, then software can run on unsupported OS versions, but the system complexity and resource overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of using full hypervisor virtualization for all scenarios, the system applies virtualization selectively - creating containers only for software that requires specific OS prerequisites. Each container is customized with exactly the OS version and components needed by the specific software, avoiding unnecessary virtualization overhead for applications that can run on the host OS.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses lightweight OS-level containers instead of heavy hypervisor-based virtual machines. These containers are easier to create, manage, and destroy, providing the necessary OS isolation with minimal resource overhead and system complexity while maintaining the ability to run software on compatible OS versions.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for installing a computer program is provided, which includes: determining at a beginning of an installation procedure of the computer program whether an operating system being executed on the computer systems supports a prerequisite component for installing and executing the computer program by using operating system support information corresponding to the computer program. Based on determining that the prerequisite component is not supported by the operating system, performing: setting up a container comprising the prerequisite component using operating system level virtualization, installing the computer program in the container, and providing information on how to access the computer program being executed on the container.