LXD

REST API, command line tool and OpenStack integration plugin for LXC.

LXD is pronounced lex-dee.

Getting started with LXD

Since LXD development is happening at such a rapid pace, we only provide daily builds right now. They're available via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-lxc/lxd-git-master && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lxd

After you've got LXD installed, you can take your first steps.

Building from source

We have exeperienced some problems using gccgo, so for now we recommend using the golang compiler. We also require that a 1.1+ version of lxc and lxc-dev be installed. Additionally, some of LXD's dependencies are grabbed from go get via mercurial, so you'll need to have hg in your path as well. You can get these on Ubuntu via:

sudo apt-get install lxc lxc-dev mercurial git pkg-config protobuf-compiler golang-goprotobuf-dev

Installing Go

LXD requires Golang 1.3 or later to work.

If running Ubuntu, the easiest way to get it is to use the LXD PPA:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-lxc/lxd-git-master
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install golang

In order to be able to extract images and create containers, a few more dependencies are xz, tar, and setfacl:

sudo apt-get install xz-utils tar acl

To run the testsuite, you'll also need:

sudo apt-get install curl gettext jq sqlite3

Building the tools

LXD consists of two binaries, a client called lxc and a server called lxd. These live in the source tree in the lxc/ and lxd/ dirs, respectively. To get the code, set up your go environment:

mkdir -p ~/go
export GOPATH=~/go

And then download it as usual:

go get github.com/lxc/lxd
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/lxc/lxd
go get -v -d ./...
make

...which will give you two binaries in $GOPATH/bin, lxd the daemon binary, and lxc a command line client to that daemon.

Machine Setup

You'll need sub{u,g}ids for root, so that LXD can create the unprivileged containers:

echo "root:1000000:65536" | sudo tee -a /etc/subuid /etc/subgid

Now you can run the daemon (the --group admin bit allows everyone in the admin group to talk to LXD; you can create your own group if you want, but typically all sudo users are in the admin group, so this is a handy way to allow them to talk to LXD):

sudo -E $GOPATH/bin/lxd --group admin

First steps

LXD has two parts, the daemon (the lxd binary), and the client (the lxc binary). Now that the daemon is all configured and running (either via the packaging or via the from-source instructions above), you can import some images:

scripts/lxd-images import lxc ubuntu trusty amd64 --alias ubuntu --alias ubuntu/trusty --alias ubuntu/trusty/amd64
scripts/lxd-images import lxc debian wheezy amd64 --alias debian --alias debian/wheezy --alias debian/wheezy/amd64

With those two images imported into LXD, you can now start containers:

$GOPATH/bin/lxc launch ubuntu
$GOPATH/bin/lxc launch debian debian01

Bug reports

Bug reports can be filed at https://github.com/lxc/lxd/issues/new

Contributing

Fixes and new features are greatly appreciated but please read our contributing guidelines first.

Contributions to this project should be sent as pull requests on github.

Hacking

Sometimes it is useful to view the raw response that LXD sends; you can do this by:

lxc config set password foo
lxc remote add local 127.0.0.1:8443
wget --no-check-certificate https://127.0.0.1:8443/1.0/finger --certificate=$HOME/.config/lxc/client.crt --private-key=$HOME/.config/lxc/client.key -O - -q

Support and discussions

We use the LXC mailing-lists for developer and user discussions, you can find and subscribe to those at: https://lists.linuxcontainers.org

If you prefer live discussions, some of us also hang out in #lxcontainers on irc.freenode.net.