METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING VIRTUAL NAMESPACES FOR ACTIVE COMPUTING ENVIRONMENTS

The present invention provides private namespaces for active computing environments. The invention uses one or more “compute capsules”. A compute capsule is a private, portable, persistent environment. Each compute capsule comprises an arbitrary set of active processes and their associated state information. In one embodiment, compute capsules provide a private, customizable view of a shared file system, so that users can modify arbitrary files without the expense of providing each person with a separate and complete file system image. In one embodiment, the invention provides environments with different personalities, each of which can be contained within a capsule. For example, a user can have one capsule for normal desktop usage, a fail-safe capsule with a minimal environment and no external dependencies, capsules for work-related and personal activities, etc. In one embodiment, capsules are given access rights.