container-tools(7)

Overview

"[A Linux container] is an operating-system-level virtualization environment for running multiple isolated Linux systems (containers) on a single Linux control host."

— Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LXC)

container-tools provides the system integration for managing containers using systemd-nspawn.

Download

• Upstream Releases: https://files.open-infrastructure.net/software/container-tools/upstream

• Upstream Sources: https://sources.open-infrastructure.net/software/container-tools

• Debian Releases: https://files.open-infrastructure.net/software/container-tools/debian

• Debian Sources: https://sources.progress-linux.org/users/daniel/debian/packages/open-infrastructure-container-tools

Installation

Source

1. sudo apt install asciidoc git docbook-xml docbook-xsl libxml2-utils make xsltproc dbus systemd-container

2. git clone https://sources.open-infrastructure.net/software/container-tools

3. cd container-tools && sudo make install

Debian 9 (stretch) and newer

• sudo apt install container-tools

Development

Bug reports, feature requests, help, patches, support and everything else are welcome on the Open Infrastructure Software Mailing List:

• https://lists.open-infrastructure.net/listinfo/software

Please base patches against the next Git branch using common sense:

• https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/SubmittingPatches

Debian specific bugs can also be reported in the Debian Bug Tracking System:

• https://bugs.debian.org

Known limitations

• This version of container-tools currently do not work with systemd-networkd and depend on ifupdown.

• Using overlay, the upper directory can not be an NFS mount due to limitations in Linux' overlay filesystem, see https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.txt

Usage

Create a new container:

sudo container create -n NAME

Start a container:

sudo container start -n NAME

Stop a container:

sudo container stop -n NAME

Remove a container:

sudo container remove -n NAME

List container on the system:

sudo container list

Show container-tools version:

container version

See container(1) for a list of all container commands.

Links

2016-02-24: Systemd vs. Docker

https://lwn.net/Articles/676831/

2015-06-10: Systemd and containers

https://lwn.net/Articles/647634/

2014-07-07: Control groups

https://lwn.net/Articles/604609/

2013-11-13: Systemd-Nspawn is Chroot on Steroids [LinuxCon Europe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7LlUs5D9p4

2013-11-03: Creating containers with systemd-nspawn

https://lwn.net/Articles/572957/

2013-02-06: Systemd lightweight containers

https://lwn.net/Articles/536033/

2013-01-04: Namespaces in operation

https://lwn.net/Articles/531114/