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If the goal of the test is to debug a sad linux server, containers are going to severely limit what ways the server can be sad in, isn't it?

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Can you give me an example of some of the severe limitations you're mentioning?

I can give you a bunch of things that can't be simulated in a container:

* Boot problems, such as: GRUB config/install errors, kernel parameters, init startup errors, blocking processes

* Many network scenarios, such as: PXE issues, multipath, load-balacing, anything requiring configuring network interface settings, firewall configuration.

* Resetting an unknown root password

* Booting directly to bash

* Filesystem mounts through fstab or systemd mounts

There's probably more I could think of, but I think that's a good list.

I don't think the DNS exercise would behave the same although that probably depends on how the container was setup. Docker usually controls /etc/resolv.conf. Another exercise is "try to figure out if you're in a container or VM so that'd definitely be different"

The question is not if the exercises would behave identically, but if you can test the objective in a container. For example, you can totally test, screw up, and fix DNS in a container. I would think that "try to figure out if you're in a container or VM" would be exactly the same as it is right now.

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