The file system consists of a minimal Fedora Core 4 Linux distribution. See the Fedora Core 4 Release Notes for more information.

Two accounts are created by default: root and the remote host account name that the user configured during his initial setup. root's password is "root" and the user account has no password. Password-based ssh authentication is disabled, so passwords are only useful for logging in via the ssh console. Both accounts accept ssh connections that use the private half of the user's ssh public key.

In some Tycoon deployments, routable IP addresses are not automatically available for the virtual machines, so they use Network Address Translation. In other words, they share an IP address with the physical machine. In general, NAT-ing prevents an external client from contacting the NAT-ed host, but Tycoon provides two ways around this: port forwarding of the ssh port and the ssh console (described below). The ssh port on the virtual machine is forwarded from a unique port on the physical machine, determined when the user created his host account.

To accept non-ssh incoming network connections for a host account, a user bids on either a TCP port or an IP address. See Chapter 4, Bids and Bidding for details.

Users can access the console of their virtual machines by making an ssh connection to port 22 on the physical machine. The connection is authenticated using their remote host account name and the private half of their ssh public keys. The ssh console is mainly useful when the virtual machine's networking is down or to observe the virtual machine's boot process.

The kernel used in the virtual machine must be patched to be a Xen Linux domain kernel.

The resources available to a virtual machine will vary depending on the current demand on the physical machine and the users' bids.