Which TWO statements correctly describe how an application container differs from a system container on Linux?
LPIC-1 Exam 101-500, objective 102. Linux installation and package management medium
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The options
Choose 2.
Correct An application container image normally carries a single service together with the libraries it needs, and the container lives only as long as that process runs
Correct. That is the packaging convention behind OCI and Docker images: the image entrypoint is the service, and when it exits the container stops.
Correct A system container boots a complete userland with an init system, so it is administered much like an ordinary machine
Correct. This is the LXC or systemd-nspawn style of container: many services, an init process as PID 1 inside the container, and logins.
Not correct An application container boots its own kernel, which is how it can be based on a different distribution than the host
Wrong. No container boots a kernel; all containers run on the host kernel. A different distribution inside the image is possible because only the userland differs.
Not correct Data written inside a running application container is stored in its image, so it survives recreating the container from that image
Wrong. Image layers are read only and each container gets an ephemeral writable layer on top, which is discarded with the container. Persistence requires a volume or bind mount.
Not correct Running an application container requires CPU virtualization extensions such as Intel VT-x or AMD-V
Wrong. Those extensions are a requirement of hardware virtualization; containers are ordinary processes isolated by namespaces and cgroups and need no such support.
Why
Both kinds of container use the same kernel machinery, namespaces for isolation and cgroups for resource limits; what differs is the scope of what is packaged. An application container wraps one service and treats the container as disposable, so its filesystem is a stack of read-only image layers plus a throwaway writable layer. A system container wraps a whole userland and is treated as a long-lived lightweight machine. Neither has its own kernel, which is what separates both from a virtual machine.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- LPI exam objective 102.6
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