Provided by: lxc_6.0.2-1ubuntu1_amd64 bug

NAME

       lxc - linux containers

OVERVIEW

       The  container  technology  is  actively being pushed into the mainstream Linux kernel. It
       provides resource management through control groups and resource isolation via namespaces.

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

       lxc is small enough to easily manage a container with simple command  lines  and  complete
       enough to be used for other purposes.

REQUIREMENTS

       The  kernel  version  >=  3.10 shipped with the distros, will work with lxc, this one will
       have less functionalities but enough to be interesting.

       lxc relies on a set of functionalities provided by the  kernel.  The  helper  script  lxc-
       checkconfig  will  give  you  information  about  your kernel configuration, required, and
       missing features.

FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATION

       A container is an object isolating some resources of the  host,  for  the  application  or
       system running in it.

       The  application / system will be launched inside a container specified by a configuration
       that is either initially created or passed as a parameter of the commands.

       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 PIDs, the sysv IPC and 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 needs
       to be  isolated,  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

   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 CONTAINERS
       A persistent container object can be created  via  the  lxc-create  command.  It  takes  a
       container name as parameter and optional configuration file and template. 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

   VOLATILE CONTAINER
       It is not mandatory to create a container object before starting it.  The container can be
       directly started with a configuration file as parameter.

   STARTING / STOPPING CONTAINER
       When the container has been created, it is ready to run an application / system.  This  is
       the  purpose  of  the lxc-execute and lxc-start commands. If the container was not created
       before starting the application, the container will use the configuration file  passed  as
       parameter  to  the  command,  and if there is no such parameter either, then it will use a
       default isolation. If the application ended, the container will be stopped, but if  needed
       the lxc-stop command can be used to stop the container.

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

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

       The  lxc-execute  command  will  run  the  specified  command  into  a  container  via  an
       intermediate process, lxc-init.  This lxc-init after launching the specified command, will
       wait  for  its  end  and  all  other  reparented  processes.  (to  support  daemons in the
       container). In other words, in the container, lxc-init has PID 1 and the first process  of
       the application has PID 2.

       The lxc-start command will directly run the specified command in the container. The PID of
       the first process is 1. If no command is specified lxc-start will run the command  defined
       in lxc.init.cmd or if not set, /sbin/init .

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

       If the application is no longer responding, is 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 -k

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

              lxc-console -n foo -t 3

   FREEZE / UNFREEZE 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 them.

       This feature is enabled if the freezer cgroup v1 controller is enabled in the kernel.

   GETTING INFORMATION ABOUT 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 in a specific container. For this
       reason, the following commands may be useful:

              lxc-ls -f
              lxc-info -n foo

       lxc-ls lists containers.

       lxc-info gives information for a specific container.

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

              for i in $(lxc-ls -1); do
                lxc-info -n $i
              done

   MONITORING CONTAINER
       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
       accepts 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 it successfully started as a daemon.

              # 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"

   CGROUP SETTINGS FOR CONTAINERS
       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.

SEE ALSO

       lxc(7),  lxc-create(1),  lxc-copy(1),  lxc-destroy(1),  lxc-start(1),  lxc-stop(1),   lxc-
       execute(1),  lxc-console(1),  lxc-monitor(1),  lxc-wait(1), lxc-cgroup(1), lxc-ls(1), lxc-
       info(1), lxc-freeze(1), lxc-unfreeze(1), lxc-attach(1), lxc.conf(5)