lxc-lvm-clone

The lxc-clone script was so useful to me that I decided I simply must have it with LVM. So that’s now committed at lp:~serge-hallyn/ubuntu/natty/lxc/lxc-clone and pushed to ppa:serge-hallyn/lxc-natty.

To get started I create a pristine LVM-based container. This only needs to be done once, as I’ll update the pristine images periodically rather than build new ones. So I didn’t automate that step, rather I created a normal container and converted it. I created the container using:

{{{
lxc-create -f /etc/lxc-basic.conf -n maverick -t maverick
}}}

I didn’t yet have an LVM partition set up, so I merged /dev/sda7 and /dev/sda8 into one 20G partition of type 8e (linux LVM) and did

{{{
pvcreate /dev/sda7
vgcreate lxc /dev/sda7
}}}

Then I created an lvm partition and copied the rootfs to it:

{{{
lvcreate -L 2G -n maverick lxc
mkfs.xfs /dev/lxc/maverick
mkdir /mnt/1
mount /dev/lxc/maverick /mnt/1
rsync -va /var/lib/lxc/maverick/rootfs/ /mnt/1/
umount /mnt/1
}}}

Next I removed the original container rootfs and tweaked the config file to use the LVM partition:

{{{
rm -rf /var/lib/lxc/maverick/rootfs
mkdir !!:2
sed -i ‘/lxc.rootfs/d’ /var/lib/lxc/maverick/config
echo “lxc.rootfs = /dev/lxc/maverick” >> /var/lib/lxc/maverick/config
}}}

Now the pristine container is ready. I can start it as usual using

{{{
lxc-start -n maverick
}}}

and keep it uptodate with the usual tools. When I want to create a container to, say, reproduce a bug,

{{{
lxc-lvm-clone -o maverick -n mtmp1
}}}

When I’m done,

{{{
lxc-destroy -l -n mtmp1
}}}

where -l tells lxc-destroy to call lvremove on the lvm snapshot. The only downside to using these for bug reproduction is that syslog is not being properly handled. Hopefully we can do something about that soon.