Purpose

These scripts are useful to manage your own server, with several Linux containers.

Installation

• Either clone this code repository: cd ~; git clone https://github.com/tpokorra/lxc-scripts.git scripts
• Or install a package from LBS: https://lbs.solidcharity.com/package/tpokorra/lbs/lxc-scripts
  • There is a lxc-scripts package for CentOS7, and Ubuntu 20.04, with instructions how to install the package
  • To make things easier, I usually create a symbolic link: cd ~; ln -s /usr/share/lxc-scripts scripts

After installing the package, run these scripts for initializing the firewall and some fixes for the LXC templates:

/usr/share/lxc-scripts/initLXC.sh
/usr/share/lxc-scripts/initIPTables.sh

CheatSheet for my LXC scripts

• Initialise the host IPTables so that they will be survive a reboot: ~/scripts/initIPTables.sh
• Small fixes to the LXC system for CentOS7 containers, and create ssh keys: ~/scripts/initLXC.sh
• Create a container (with networking etc): ~/scripts/initCentOS.sh $name $id
  • Call the script without parameters to see additional parameters, eg to specify the version of the OS etc: ~/scripts/initCentOS.sh
  • There are scripts for creating CentOS, Debian, and Ubuntu containers
• Containers are created in /var/lib/lxc/$name, see the file config and the directory rootfs
• Start a container: lxc-start --name $name
• Start a container without console: lxc-start -d --name $name
• Stop a container: lxc-stop -n $name
• Destroy a container: lxc-destroy --name $name
• List all containers, with running state and IP address: lxc-ls -f
  • alternatively, there is this script: ~/scripts/listcontainers.sh which works even on CentOS where python3 is not (yet) available
  • this also shows the OS of the container
  • ~/scripts/listcontainers.sh running: shows only running containers
  • ~/scripts/listcontainers.sh stopped: shows only stopped containers
• Stop all containers: ~/scripts/stopall.sh

Snapshots:

• are stored in /var/lib/lxcsnaps/
• first stop the container: lxc-stop -n $name
• then create the snapshot: lxc-snapshot -n $name
  • create with comment: echo "mycomment" > /tmp/comment && lxc-snapshot -n $name -c /tmp/comment && rm -f /tmp/comment
• list all snapshots: lxc-snapshot -LC -n $name
• restore a snapshot: lxc-snapshot -n $name -r snap@
• create a new container from snapshot: lxc-snapshot -n $name -r snap@ new$name
• delete a snapshot: lxc-snapshot -n $name -d snap@