lxc

Langue: en

Autres versions - même langue

Version: 29 April 2009 (debian - 07/07/09)

Section: 7 (Divers)

Sommaire

NAME

lxc - linux containers

QUICK START

You are in a hurry, and you don't want to read this man page. Ok, without warranty, here are the commands to launch a shell inside a container with a predefined configuration template, it may work. /usr/bin/lxc-execute -n foo -f /etc/lxc/lxc-macvlan.conf /bin/bash

OVERVIEW

The container technology is actively being pushed into the mainstream linux kernel. It provides the resource management through the control groups aka process containers and resource isolation through the namespaces.

The linux containers, lxc, aims to use these new functionalities to provide an userspace container object which provides full resource isolation and resource control for an applications or a system.

The first objective of this project is to make the life easier for the kernel developers involved in the containers project and especially to continue working on the Checkpoint/Restart new features. The lxc is small enough to easily manage a container with simple command lines and complete enough to be used for other purposes.

REQUIREMENTS

The lxc relies on a set of functionalies provided by the kernel which needs to be active. Depending of the missing functionalities the lxc will work with a restricted number of functionalities or will simply fails.

The following list gives the kernel features to be enabled in the kernel to have the full features container:

             * General
               * Control Group support
                 -> namespace cgroup subsystem
                 -> cpuset support
                 -> Group CPU scheduler
                 -> control group freeze subsystem
                 -> Basis for grouping tasks (Control Groups)
                 -> Simple CPU accounting
                 -> Resource counters
                 -> Memory resource controllers for Control Groups
                 -> Namespace support
                   -> UTS namespace   
                   -> IPC namespace
                   -> User namespace
                   -> Pid namespace
             * Network support
               -> Networking options
                  -> Network namespace support

For the moment the easiest way to have all the features in the kernel is to use the git tree at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/daveh/linux-2.6-lxc.git But the kernel version >= 2.6.27 shipped with the distros, may work with lxc, this one will have less functionalities but enough to be interesting. The planned kernel version which lxc should be fully functionaly is 2.6.29.

Before using the lxc, your system should be configured with the file capabilities, otherwise you will need to run the lxc commands as root. The control group should be mounted anywhere, eg: mount -t cgroup cgroup /cgroup

FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATION

A container is an object where the configuration is persistent. The application will be launched inside this container and it will use the configuration which was previously created.

How to run an application in a container ?

Before running an application, you should know what are the resources you want to isolate. The default configuration is to isolate the pids, the sysv ipc and the mount points. If you want to run a simple shell inside a container, a basic configuration is needed, especially if you want to share the rootfs. If you want to run an application like sshd, you should provide a new network stack and a new hostname. If you want to avoid conflicts with some files eg. /var/run/httpd.pid, you should remount /var/run with an empty directory. If you want to avoid the conflicts in all the cases, you can specify a rootfs for the container. The rootfs can be a directory tree, previously bind mounted with the initial rootfs, so you can still use your distro but with your own /etc and /home

Here is an example of directory tree for sshd:

         
 [root@lxc sshd]$ tree -d rootfs
         
 rootfs  
 |-- bin 
 |-- dev 
 |   |-- pts
 |   `-- shm
 |       `-- network
 |-- etc 
 |   `-- ssh
 |-- lib 
 |-- proc
 |-- root
 |-- sbin
 |-- sys 
 |-- usr 
 `-- var 
     |-- empty
     |   `-- sshd
     |-- lib
     |   `-- empty
     |       `-- sshd
     `-- run
         `-- sshd
and the mount points file associated with it: 
         [root@lxc sshd]$ cat fstab
 
         /lib /home/root/sshd/rootfs/lib none ro,bind 0 0
         /bin /home/root/sshd/rootfs/bin none ro,bind 0 0
         /usr /home/root/sshd/rootfs/usr none ro,bind 0 0
         /sbin /home/root/sshd/rootfs/sbin none ro,bind 0 0

How to run a system in a container ?

Running a system inside a container is paradoxically easier than running an application. Why ? Because you don't have to care about the resources to be isolated, everything need to be isolated except /dev which needs to be remounted in the container rootfs, the other resources are specified as being isolated but without configuration because the container will set them up. eg. the ipv4 address will be setup by the system container init scripts. Here is an example of the mount points file:

         [root@lxc debian]$ cat fstab
 
         /dev    /home/root/debian/rootfs/dev none bind 0 0
         /dev/pts /home/root/debian/rootfs/dev/pts  none bind 0 0
More information can be added to the container to facilitate the configuration. For example, make accessible from the container the resolv.conf file belonging to the host. 
         /etc/resolv.conf /home/root/debian/rootfs/etc/resolv.conf none bind 0 0

CONTAINER LIFE CYCLE

When the container is created, it contains the configuration information. When a process is launched, the container will be starting and running. When the last process running inside the container exits, the container is stopped.

In case of failure when the container is initialized, it will pass through the aborting state.

 
    ---------
   | STOPPED |<---------------
    ---------                 |
        |                     |
      start                   |
        |                     |
        V                     |
    ----------                |
   | STARTING |--error-       |
    ----------         |      |
        |              |      |
        V              V      |
    ---------    ----------   |
   | RUNNING |  | ABORTING |  |
    ---------    ----------   |
        |              |      |
   no process          |      |
        |              |      |
        V              |      |
    ----------         |      |
   | STOPPING |<-------       |
    ----------                |
        |                     |
         ---------------------

CONFIGURATION

The container is configured through a configuration file, the format of the configuration file is described in lxc.conf(5)

CREATING / DESTROYING THE CONTAINERS

The container is created via the lxc-create command. It takes a container name as parameter and an optional configuration file. The name is used by the different commands to refer to this container. The lxc-destroy command will destroy the container object.

           lxc-create -n foo
           lxc-destroy -n foo

STARTING / STOPPING A CONTAINER

When the container has been created, it is ready to run an application / system. When the application has to be destroyed the container can be stopped, that will kill all the processes of the container.

Running an application inside a container is not exactly the same thing as running a system. For this reason, there is two commands to run an application into a container:

           lxc-execute -n foo [-f config] /bin/bash
           lxc-start -n foo [/bin/bash]

lxc-execute command will run the specified command into a container but it will mount /proc and autocreate/autodestroy the container if it does not exist. It will furthermore create an intermediate process, lxc-init, which is in charge to launch the specified command, that allows to support daemons in the container. In other words, in the container lxc-init has the pid 1 and the first process of the application has the pid 2.

lxc-start command will run the specified command into the container doing nothing else than using the configuration specified by lxc-create. The pid of the first process is 1. If no command is specified lxc-start will run /sbin/init.

To summarize, lxc-execute is for running an application and lxc-start is for running a system.

If the application is no longer responding, inaccessible or is not able to finish by itself, a wild lxc-stop command will kill all the processes in the container without pity.

           lxc-stop -n foo

CONNECT TO AN AVAILABLE TTY

If the container is configured with the ttys, it is possible to access it through them. It is up to the container to provide a set of available tty to be used by the following command. When the tty is lost, it is possible to reconnect it without login again.

           lxc-console -n foo -t 3

FREEZE / UNFREEZE A CONTAINER

Sometime, it is useful to stop all the processes belonging to a container, eg. for job scheduling. The commands:

           lxc-freeze -n foo
will put all the processes in an uninteruptible state and 
           lxc-unfreeze -n foo
will resume all the tasks.

This feature is enabled if the cgroup freezer is enabled in the kernel.

GETTING INFORMATION ABOUT THE CONTAINER

When there are a lot of containers, it is hard to follow what has been created or destroyed, what is running or what are the pids running into a specific container. For this reason, the following commands give this information:

           lxc-ls
           lxc-ps -n foo
           lxc-info -n foo

lxc-ls lists the containers of the system. The command is a script built on top of ls, so it accepts the options of the ls commands, eg:

           lxc-ls -C1
will display the containers list in one column or: 
           lxc-ls -l
will display the containers list and their permissions.

lxc-ps will display the pids for a specific container. Like lxc-ls, lxc-ps is built on top of ps and accepts the same options, eg:

           lxc-ps -n foo --forest
will display the process hierarchy for the container 'foo'.

lxc-info gives informations for a specific container, at present time, only the state of the container is displayed.

Here is an example on how the combination of these commands allow to list all the containers and retrieve their state.

           for i in $(lxc-ls -1); do
             lxc-info -n $i
           done
And displaying all the pids of all the containers: 
           for i in $(lxc-ls -1); do
             lxc-ps -n $i --forest
           done

lxc-netstat display network information for a specific container. This command is built on top of the netstat command and will accept its options

The following command will display the socket informations for the container 'foo'.

           lxc-netstat -n foo -tano

MONITORING THE CONTAINERS

It is sometime useful to track the states of a container, for example to monitor it or just to wait for a specific state in a script.

lxc-monitor command will monitor one or several containers. The parameter of this command accept a regular expression for example:

           lxc-monitor -n "foo|bar"
will monitor the states of containers named 'foo' and 'bar', and: 
           lxc-monitor -n ".*"
will monitor all the containers.

For a container 'foo' starting, doing some work and exiting, the output will be in the form:

 'foo' changed state to [STARTING]
 'foo' changed state to [RUNNING]
 'foo' changed state to [STOPPING]
 'foo' changed state to [STOPPED]

lxc-wait command will wait for a specific state change and exit. This is useful for scripting to synchronize the launch of a container or the end. The parameter is an ORed combination of different states. The following example shows how to wait for a container if he went to the background.

 
           # launch lxc-wait in background
           lxc-wait -n foo -s STOPPED &
           LXC_WAIT_PID=$!
 
           # this command goes in background
           lxc-execute -n foo mydaemon &
 
           # block until the lxc-wait exits
           # and lxc-wait exits when the container
           # is STOPPED
           wait $LXC_WAIT_PID
           echo "'foo' is finished"

SETTING THE CONTROL GROUP FOR A CONTAINER

The container is tied with the control groups, when a container is started a control group is created and associated with it. The control group properties can be read and modified when the container is running by using the lxc-cgroup command.

lxc-cgroup command is used to set or get a control group subsystem which is associated with a container. The subsystem name is handled by the user, the command won't do any syntax checking on the subsystem name, if the subsystem name does not exists, the command will fail.

           lxc-cgroup -n foo cpuset.cpus
will display the content of this subsystem. 
           lxc-cgroup -n foo cpu.shares 512
will set the subsystem to the specified value.

BUGS

The lxc is still in development, so the command syntax and the API can change. The version 1.0.0 will be the frozen version.

SEE ALSO

lxc-create(1), lxc-destroy(1), lxc-start(1), lxc-execute(1), lxc-stop(1), lxc-console(1), lxc-monitor(1), lxc-wait(1), lxc-cgroup(1), lxc-ls(1), lxc-ps(1), lxc-info(1), lxc-freeze(1), lxc-unfreeze(1), lxc.conf(5),

AUTHOR

Daniel Lezcano <daniel.lezcano@free.fr>