Overview

On-demand SSH-gated microVMs that boot the moment you connect and suspend when you walk away.

krillbox gives every user ephemeral, isolated Linux boxes — real microVMs (Cloud Hypervisor + KVM), not shared-kernel containers. You SSH to a name; the gateway transparently boots or wakes the box and proxies you straight to its sshd. Idle boxes are snapshotted and suspended, then resumed in well under a second on the next connection.

How it works

1. You run ssh box@krillbox.gra.ke2.cloud.ovh.net; the gateway resolves the box for your identity.
2. Missing → cloned from a golden image (instant ZFS copy-on-write). Suspended → resumed from its memory snapshot.
3. The gateway proxies SSH end-to-end to the box's sshd — agent-forwarding, scp/sftp all work.
4. After an idle timeout the box is paused, snapshotted, and suspended.

Architecture

• Server — control plane + state (boxes, volumes, snapshots, tasks).
• Agents — one per host; run the VMMs, ZFS, the per-tenant overlay network, and the auto-suspender.
• Gateway — the SSH / HTTP / WebSocket front door (also serves these docs and the API).

The features

• Spawning & cloning — instant boxes from golden images; snapshot & clone.
• Networking & DNS — a private per-tenant network with stable IPs and name resolution.
• Workspace — a persistent /wrk shared across your boxes.
• Auto-suspend — idle boxes cost ~nothing and wake in <1s.
• Self-upgrade — boxes keep their in-guest tooling current: signed, verified, opt-in.
• Flavors & images — pick the size and base OS.