If you are running dev-lxc-platform 1.x and you want to upgrade to 2.x please use the following instructions.
-
Run
kitchen destroyto destroy the host VM BEFORE pulling/downloading the new dev-lxc-platform code. Destroying the VM before downloading the new dev-lxc-platform code avoids complications caused by the new.kitchen.ymlfile pointing to the Ubuntu 15.04 image. Runningkitchen destroyshould not destroy the second disk that holds the containers you've built as long as you have thevagrant-persistent-storageplugin installed. -
Make sure you have the latest version of Vagrant and Virtualbox installed.
-
Upgrade the
vagrant-persistent-storageplugin.vagrant plugin update vagrant-persistent-storage -
Run
git pull --rebaseif you already have a clone of the dev-lxc-platform repository or download the latest dev-lxc-platform cookbook code. -
Run
kitchen convergefrom the root directory of the dev-lxc-platform cookbook to build the new Ubuntu 15.04 host VM. -
Login to the new VM and continue using your containers.
The primary purpose of the dev-lxc-platform repo is to build a suitable environment for the dev-lxc tool which uses LXC containers to build Chef server clusters.
The environment is also suitable for other tools that use LXC such as LXD, docker, Test Kitchen and Chef Provisioning or just general LXC container usage.
- LXD and LXC Containers - Resource efficient servers with fast start/stop times and standard init
- Btrfs - Efficient, persistent storage backend provides fast, lightweight container cloning
- Dnsmasq - DHCP networking and DNS resolution
- Platform Images - Images that are built to resemble a traditional server
- Sysdig preinstalled for awesome transparency into container activity
Creating snapshot clones of Btrfs backed containers is very fast which is helpful especially for experimenting and troubleshooting.
Download and install VirtualBox.
Download and install Vagrant.
Install the vagrant-persistent-storage plugin.
vagrant plugin install vagrant-persistent-storage
Download and install ChefDK.
Adding a route entry to the workstation enables direct communication between the workstation and any container.
For OS X run the following command. The route entry won't survive a worstation reboot. You will have to create it as needed.
sudo route -n add 10.0.3.0/24 33.33.34.13
Your workstation needs to know how to resolve the .lxc domain. For OS X you can run the following command.
echo nameserver 10.0.3.1 | sudo tee /etc/resolver/lxc
The dev-lxc-platform repo contains a .kitchen.yml which uses an Ubuntu 14.04 Vagrant base box created by Chef.
The .kitchen.yml is configured to install ChefDK into the Vagrant VM for provisioning. The root user's shell environment is also configured to use ChefDK as the default ruby. This makes dev-lxc-platform a great platform for testing and experimenting with other Chef container technologies.
The .kitchen.yml uses the dev-lxc-platform cookbook contained in this repo to install and configure a suitable LXC with Btrfs backed container storage.
The .kitchen.yml is configured to use 6GB ram in order to give plenty of room to run multiple containers. Feel free to reduce this if it is too much for your environment.
The .kitchen.yml has a commented out synced_folders section.
Uncomment and configure the section appropriately if you want to mount a directory from
your workstation into the Vagrant VM. This is useful for sharing things like Chef packages
from your workstation into the Vagrant VM and ultimately into running LXC containers.
kitchen converge
Vagrant will create a second virtual disk to store the LXC containers in a Btrfs filesystem. The vagrant-persistent-storage plugin will ensure the volume is detached before the VM is destroyed and reattached when the VM is created.
While this persistent volume allows the Vagrant VM to be treated as disposable I recommend
that you don't bother destroying the VM regularly unless you want to wait for it to be
provisioned each time. I keep the VM running a lot of the time so I can jump in
and use it when I need to. If I really want to shut it down I just vagrant halt it.
kitchen login
Since the dev-lxc-platform VM is created using test-kitchen normal Vagrant commands will not affect the VM.
Enabling standard Vagrant can be useful especially since test-kitchen is not able to halt the VM.
Correctly setting the VAGRANT_CWD environment variable will allow Vagrant commands to be used.
You can run the following command in the top level directory of the dev-lxc-platform repo.
export VAGRANT_CWD=$(realpath .kitchen/kitchen-vagrant/kitchen-dev-lxc-platform-default-ubuntu-1404)
Alternatively, you can use direnv with the .envrc file included in the
dev-lxc-platform repo to automatically set VAGRANT_CWD upon entering the top level directory
of the dev-lxc-platform repo.
If you have homebrew installed in OS X then you can install direnv by running brew install direnv.
Since you may spend a lot of time doing work within the Vagrant VM you should consider using a terminal multiplexer such as tmux or byobu.
These tools are already installed in the Vagrant VM.
Once you login to the root user you can set byobu to auto-run on every login by running the following command.
byobu-enable
You can easily disable auto-run at any time using byobu-disable.
The prefix key is set to Ctrl-o
Pressing Fn-F1 in OS X will get you a help screen and selecting the "Quick Start Guide"
will give you a list of frequently used key bindings.
Read the following introduction to LXC if you aren't already familiar with it.
The following commands must be run as the root user so once you login to the Vagrant VM you
should run sudo -i to login as the root user.
Use the installed dev-lxc tool to create a platform image. These platform images can then be cloned into new containers.
You can see a menu of platform images this tool can create by using the following command.
dev-lxc create
The initial creation of platform images can take a few minutes so let's start creating an Ubuntu 14.04 image now.
dev-lxc create p-ubuntu-1404
The dev-lxc-platform has a number of bash functions with names that begin with xc-.
Many of these are simple wrappers around their counterpart lxc- command.
Type xc- and hit the TAB key a couple times to see the list of commands.
The xc- commands are designed to use environment variables to identify what container to
act on. This makes the commands easier to run compared to the lxc- commands requirements.
The BASE_CONTAINER environment variable can be set to the name of the container that
should be used during cloning operations.
If the name of the base container is specified when running an xc- command then the
BASE_CONTAINER variable is set to that name. Then subsequent xc- commands can be
run without specifying the name and the same container will continue to be treated as the
base container.
The WORKING_CONTAINER environment variable can be set to the name of the container that
should be acted on by the xc- command.
If the name of the working container is specified when running an xc- command then the
WORKING_CONTAINER variable is set to that name. Then subsequent xc- commands can be
run without specifying the name and the same container will continue to be treated as the
working container.
For example:
Clone base container named "p-ubuntu-1404" into working container named "test.lxc" and start it.
xc-start p-ubuntu-1404 test.lxc
Show (or manually set) the name of the base container and working container.
xc-base
xc-working
Destroy "test.lxc".
xc-destroy
Re-clone base container named "p-ubuntu-1404" into working container named "test.lxc" and start it.
xc-start
Mount the Vagrant VM's /root/dev directory into the working container.
xc-mount /root/dev root/dev
xc-stop
xc-start
xc-attach uptime
xc-attach
dev-lxc install-chef-client $(xc-working)
dev-lxc can also configure Chef Client in a container and/or bootstrap it. Read the help docs for the following commands.
dev-lxc help configure-chef-client
dev-lxc help bootstrap-container