Weekly status #37


Weekly status for the week of the 26th of February to the 4th of March 2018.

Introduction

So this past week was rather intense, in a nutshell, we’ve:

  • Merged LXD clustering support
  • Split python3-lxc, lua-lxc and lxc-templates out of the LXC codebase
  • Moved libpam-cgfs from lxcfs to lxc
  • Released 3.0.0 beta1 of python3-lxc and lxc-templates
  • Released 3.0.0 beta1 of lxcfs
  • Released 3.0.0 beta1 of lxc
  • Released 3.0.0 beta1 of lxd
  • Released 3.0.0 beta2 of lxd

So we’ve finally done it, most of the work that we wanted in for our 3.0 LTS release of all LXC/LXD/LXCFS repositories has been merged and we’re now focused on a few remaining tweaks, small additions and fixes with a plan to release the final 3.0 by the end of the month.

With all of this activity we’ve also had to update all the relevant packaging, moving a bunch of stuff around between packages and adding support for all the new features.

For those interesting in trying the new betas, the easiest way to see everything working together is through the LXD beta snap:

snap install lxd --beta

Note that the betas aren’t supported, you may incur data loss when upgrading or later down the line. Testing would be very much appreciated, but please do this on systems you don’t mind reinstalling if something goes wrong :slight_smile:

This week, the entire LXD team is meeting in Budapest, Hungary to go through the list of remaining things and make progress towards the final 3.0 release.

Upcoming conferences and events

Ongoing projects

The list below is feature or refactoring work which will span several weeks/months and can’t be tied directly to a single Github issue or pull request.

  • Various kernel work
  • Stable release work for LXC, LXCFS and LXD

Upstream changes

The items listed below are highlights of the work which happened upstream over the past week and which will be included in the next release.

LXD

LXC

LXCFS

Distribution work

This section is used to track the work done in downstream Linux distributions to ship the latest LXC, LXD and LXCFS as well as work to get various software to work properly inside containers.

Ubuntu

  • Uploaded python3-lxc 3.0.0~beta1 to Ubuntu 18.04 and PPAs.
  • Uploaded lxc-templates 3.0.0~beta1 to Ubuntu 18.04 and PPAs.
  • Uploaded lxcfs 3.0.0~beta1 to Ubuntu 18.04.
  • Uploaded lxc 3.0.0~beta1 to Ubuntu 18.04.
  • Uploaded lxd 3.0.0~beta1 to Ubuntu 18.04.
  • Uploaded lxd 3.0.0~beta2 to Ubuntu 18.04.
  • Several follow-up updates as we move content between packages and get automated tests to pass again.

Snap

  • Switched to Go 1.10.
  • Updated edge packaging to support LXD clustering.
  • Updated liblxc handling to reduce build time and automatically pick the right version of the library.
  • Created a new beta channel using the latest beta of all components.
2 Likes

Under the heading Snap I’m reading “Updated edge packaging to support LXD clustering” .

Does this mean that on Debian stretch (9 or stable are other references) that I’m now able to run nested containers?
If not - - - - is this something that the dev team thinks is worth working toward?

I appreciate the dev team here very much. It feels like one is allowed to be a part of this instead of merely being tolerated. Thank you!!

What does nesting have to do with clustering?

You can totally run nested containers inside LXD on Debian, you just can’t install snaps inside LXD containers so need to install LXD some other way. That limitation is because of a kernel restriction, so not something that we, as the userspace LXD team can do much about.

There is work going on to upstream the needed patches to make this work and once that’s done all Linux distributions will be getting support for it as they update their kernels.

You may be able to convince your Linux distribution to include those patches ahead of them being included in the mainline kernel, that’s what we did with Ubuntu and why Ubuntu is right now the only Linux distribution where running FUSE (and therefore snaps) is possible inside LXD containers.

OK - - - sorry for misunderstanding - - - it was clear enough but I wanted the other resultant so really jumped the gun.
Given as all the parts are now present for running lxd natively on debian maybe its time to try that install?

Oh boy - - - really betraying my ignorance here, but what group or sub-section of Debian would I contact to ask such a thing?

You’d need to reach out to their kernel team, most likely by filling a bug against the Linux kernel in their bug tracker. You’d then ask them to cherry-pick the set of patches for unprivileged FUSE which are currently being discussed on the containers kernel mailing-list.

The latest version of that set can be found here: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/containers/2018-March/038649.html