Overview

LinuX Containers (LXC) provide lightweight virtualization that lets you isolate processes and resources without the need to provide instruction interpretation mechanisms and other complexities of full virtualization.

Notes

• Upstream libvirt should support LXC.
• KVM + LXC can function properly on same host.
• 64bit OS using a 32bit container.

User case examples

1. Isolate single processes, (I.E. a webserver).
2. VPS
3. LTSP
4. Software build, testing, upgrading (think sandboxing)

Host configuration

kernel requirements

The Linux container capabilities are part of the main stream linux kernel and require kernel version >= 2.6.27 (well working as of 2.6.31).

There are no requirements to compile a kernel or apply patches.

User space tools (lxc)

The user space tools, or lxc, are a set of scripts that manage linux containers.

You may install the lxc user space tools from the Ubuntu repositories.

sudo apt-get install lxc

Or download the latest stable package from sourceforge and compile them yourself. The lxc project maintains a git repository for a bleeding edge set of tools.

Networking

There are several networking options available, the consensus appears to be that bridging your network card is the best option. As such I will cover bridging your network card here, hopefully this information can be expanded.

Container configuration

options/examples for config files chroot/debootstrap/febootstrap lxc-debian / lxc-fedora lxc-console / ssh into containers

Migrate OpenVZ containers

Application configuration

See also

• LXC Home page (Sourceforge)

• LXC overview (Sourceforge)

• Containers documentation in Ubuntu

• Stéphane Graber's docummentation

• IBM documentation

• Kernel and configuration docummentation

• Community help for OpenVZ

• OpenVZ documentation