For the impatient ones, I wrote a bash script which initializes a file system as well as create and runs a container instance. It can be found here and here. You still have to make changes to the host system yourself though before using the scripts.
To install the required tools do:
sudo apt-get install lxc bridge-utils debootstrap
Next is to setup cgroups with:
sudo mkdir /cgroup sudo echo "none /cgroup cgroup defaults 0 0" >> /etc/fstab sudo mount /cgroup
Then proceed to setup the network for bridge networking with:
sudo apt-get remove –purge network-manager network-manager-gnome
and then modify /etc/network/interfaces so it contains:
auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto br0 iface br0 inet static address 192.168.0.10 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255 gateway 192.168.0.1 bridge_ports eth0 bridge_stp off bridge_maxwait 5 post-up /usr/sbin/brctl setfd br0 0
then we setup the nameserver
sudo echo "nameserver 8.8.8.8" > /etc/resolv.conf
then reboot the host machine with:
sudo reboot
Log-in again and check that the network is still working with:
ping 8.8.8.8
and also
ping archive.ubuntu.com
Next we setup a root file system template that will be used by the containers. The following steps can be done easily using this script.
To start, we build a lucid root file system
sudo mkdir /lxc sudo cd /lxc sudo debootstrap --variant=minbase --arch i386 lucid rootfs_template
The next commands below will refer to placeholders so make sure to adjust the commands and replace them with the following:
$ROOTFS --> /lxc/rootfs_template
$MIRROR --> http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
to continue, we fix the device files
rm -rf $ROOTFS/dev mkdir $ROOTFS/dev mknod -m 666 $ROOTFS/dev/null c 1 3 mknod -m 666 $ROOTFS/dev/zero c 1 5 mknod -m 666 $ROOTFS/dev/random c 1 8 mknod -m 666 $ROOTFS/dev/urandom c 1 9 mkdir -m 755 $ROOTFS/dev/pts mkdir -m 1777 $ROOTFS/dev/shm mknod -m 666 $ROOTFS/dev/tty c 5 0 mknod -m 666 $ROOTFS/dev/tty0 c 4 0 mknod -m 666 $ROOTFS/dev/tty1 c 4 1 mknod -m 666 $ROOTFS/dev/tty2 c 4 2 mknod -m 666 $ROOTFS/dev/tty3 c 4 3 mknod -m 666 $ROOTFS/dev/tty4 c 4 4 mknod -m 600 $ROOTFS/dev/console c 5 1 mknod -m 666 $ROOTFS/dev/full c 1 7 mknod -m 600 $ROOTFS/dev/initctl p mknod -m 666 $ROOTFS/dev/ptmx c 5 2
next we modify /etc/apt/sources.list so that it contains:
deb $MIRROR lucid main universe multiverse deb $MIRROR lucid-security main universe multiverse
next we install and update the packages, run the following as root:
chroot $ROOTFS apt-get install --force-yes -y gpgv
chroot $ROOTFS apt-get update
chroot $ROOTFS apt-get install -y language-pack-en
chroot $ROOTFS locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
chroot $ROOTFS /usr/sbin/update-locale LANG="en_US.UTF-8" LANGUAGE="en_US.UTF-8" LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8" LC_CTYPE="C"
chroot $ROOTFS apt-get install -y \
adduser \
apt-utils \
console-setup \
iproute \
iptables \
nano \
netbase \
openssh-blacklist \
openssh-blacklist-extra \
openssh-server \
iputils-ping \
rsyslog \
sudo \
ufw \
vim
chroot $ROOTFS apt-get clean
as root user, setup mtab with:
chroot $ROOTFS ln -s /proc/mounts /etc/mtab
as root user, next we append the following to $ROOTFS/etc/environment:
LANG="en_US.UTF-8" LANGUAGE="en_US.UTF-8" LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8" LC_CTYPE="C"
as root user, next remove unneeded files from $ROOTFS/etc/init of the template system with:
cd $ROOTFS/etc/init
rm -f rc-sysinit.conf console* control* hwclock* module* mount* network-interface* plymouth* procps* tty{4,5,6}.conf udev* upstart*
as root user, create a $ROOTFS/etc/init/rc-sysinit file with the following content:
#!/bin/bash rm -f $(find /var/run -name '*pid') rm -f /var/lock/apache/* exit 0
as root user, make it executable with:
chmod a+x $ROOTFS/etc/init/rc-sysinit
as root user, modify ssh.conf to contain:
# ssh - OpenBSD Secure Shell server
#
# The OpenSSH server provides secure shell access to the system.
description "OpenSSH server"
start on startup
stop on runlevel S
expect fork
respawn
respawn limit 10 5
umask 022
# replaces SSHD_OOM_ADJUST in /etc/default/ssh
oom never
pre-start script
test -x /usr/sbin/sshd || { stop; exit 0; }
test -e /etc/ssh/sshd_not_to_be_run && { stop; exit 0; }
test -c /dev/null || { stop; exit 0; }
mkdir -p -m0755 /var/run/sshd
end script
# if you used to set SSHD_OPTS in /etc/default/ssh, you can change the
# 'exec' line here instead
exec /usr/sbin/sshd
as root user, we create an archive of the template so we can reuse it:
cd /lxc tar zcvf rootfs_template.tgz rootfs_template
To make things a lot easier, you can just use the bash script I wrote which can be downloaded from here. Save it in /lxc and make it executable and run it with:
sudo chmod +x /lxc/create-rootfs.sh sudo cd /lxc sudo ./create-rootfs.sh
To configure and run a container, download another bash script I wrote here and save it in /lxc.
Make it executable and run it with:
sudo chmod +x /lxc/create-container.sh cd /lxc sudo ./create-container.sh
I hope you found the post useful. You can subscribe via email or subscribe via a feed reader to get relevant updates from this blog. Have a nice day.