LXD 0.3

LXD 0.3 has been released. This version provides huge usability improvements over past versions.

Getting started

Here’s an example of quickly getting started on a fresh Ubuntu 15.04 VM:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-lxc/lxd-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lxd
sudo lxd-images import lxc ubuntu trusty amd64 --alias ubuntu

(If you are using Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty,  you can just add ppa:ubuntu-lxc/daily to get the uptodate packages;  If running something else, see the LXD website for instructions.)

lxd-images is a temporary script which downloads an image from images.linuxcontainers.org. You can also manually import any valid image tarball using the ‘lxc image import’ command, however the goal eventually is to have images automatically be downloaded (subject to your consent, i.e. depending on your current network situation) by the lxd package.

You can download and import a debian image by doing:

lxd-images import lxc debian wheezy amd64 --alias debian

You can view the list of available local images by doing:

ubuntu@vlxd:~$ lxc image list
+--------+----------+--------+-------------+
| ALIAS  |   HASH   | PUBLIC | DESCRIPTION |
+--------+----------+--------+-------------+
| debian | 532fc26c | no     |             |
| ubuntu | 8d39d97e | no     |             |
+--------+----------+--------+-------------+

Once the image is downloaded, you can launch containers based on it:

ubuntu@vlxd:~$ lxc launch debian d1
Creating container...done
Starting container...done
ubuntu@vlxd:~$ lxc launch ubuntu u2
Creating container...done
Starting container...done

Container manipulation

ubuntu@vlxd:~$ lxc list
+------+---------+-----------------------+------+
| NAME |  STATE  |         IPV4          | IPV6 |
+------+---------+-----------------------+------+
| u1   | RUNNING | 10.0.3.105, 127.0.0.1 | ::1  |
| u2   | RUNNING | 10.0.3.78, 127.0.0.1  | ::1  |
| d1   | RUNNING | 127.0.0.1             | ::1  |
+------+---------+-----------------------+------+

ubuntu@vlxd:~$ lxc exec u2 bash
root@u2:~# ping -c 1 10.0.3.105
PING 10.0.3.105 (10.0.3.105) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.0.3.105: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.108 ms

--- 10.0.3.105 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.108/0.108/0.108/0.000 ms
root@u2:~# exit

ubuntu@vlxd:~$ lxc exec u1 -- ps -ef
UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
root         1     0  0 04:40 ?        00:00:00 /sbin/init
root       399     1  0 04:40 ?        00:00:00 upstart-udev-bridge --daemon
root       433     1  0 04:40 ?        00:00:00 /lib/systemd/systemd-udevd --dae
syslog     547     1  0 04:40 ?        00:00:00 rsyslogd
root       570     1  0 04:40 ?        00:00:00 upstart-file-bridge --daemon
root       571     1  0 04:40 ?        00:00:00 upstart-socket-bridge --daemon
root      1380     1  0 04:40 ?        00:00:00 dhclient -1 -v -pf /run/dhclient
root      1446     1  0 04:40 tty4     00:00:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty4
root      1448     1  0 04:40 tty2     00:00:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty2
root      1449     1  0 04:40 tty3     00:00:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty3
root      1458     1  0 04:40 ?        00:00:00 cron
root      1490     1  0 04:40 console  00:00:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 console
root      1492     1  0 04:40 tty1     00:00:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty1
root      1530     0  0 04:42 ?        00:00:00 ps -ef

Profiles

Version 0.3 introduces container configuration and profiles. Both are configured using the ‘lxc config’ command. By default, new containers are created with the ‘default’ profile, which has a nic enabled on bridge lxcbr0. You can edit this profile by doing

lxc config profile edit default

which will bring the profile up in an external editor, and update when you save and exit.

To take the default profile out of container u1,

ubuntu@vlxd:~$ lxc config profile list
default
ubuntu@vlxd:~$ lxc config show u1
Profiles: default
ubuntu@vlxd:~$ lxc config profile apply u1
Profile (none) applied to u1
ubuntu@vlxd:~$ lxc config show u1
Profiles:

Now u1 won’t have any nics.

Lets say we want a container to have two nics. We can do this a few ways. We can create a new profile with a second nic, and apply both profiles. We can create a new nic with two nics, and apply only that one. Or we can add the device right to the container, like so:

ubuntu@vlxd:~$ lxc config device add u1 eth1 nic nictype=bridged parent=lxcbr1
Device eth1 added to u1
ubuntu@vlxd:~$ lxc config device list u1
eth1: nic
eth0: nic

I’ve only shown local usage in this post. This means I’ve left out the exciting part – remote usage! I’ll leave that for the next post.

In the meantime, you can get lxd from the above-cited ppa, from the lxd website, or from github.