A couple of us DDs met here on the weekend. It is always a fun time, being part of these meetings. We talked briefly about the status of Cross Compilation in Debian, on the tools that simplify the process.
Next we touched upon licensing, discussing the benefits of particular licenses (BSD, Apache, GPL) from the point of view of the consumer. The consumer being an individual just wanting to use/improve software, to a consumer who’s building a (free / non-free) product on top of it. I think the overall conclusion was that there are 2 major licenses at a high level: Ones those allow you take the code and not give back, and the others which allow you to take code only if you are ready to share the enhancements back and forward.
Next we briefly touched upon systemd. Given that I recently spent a good amount of time talking to the systemd maintainer while fixing bugs in my software, it was natural for me to steer that topic. At the end, more people are now enthused to learn the paradigm shift.
The other topic where we spent time was on Containers. It is impressive to see how quick, and how many, products have now spun out of cgroups. The topic moved to cgroups, thanks to systemd, one of the prime consumers of cgroups. While demonstrating the functionalities of Linux Containers (LXC), I realized that systemd has a tool in place to serve the same use case.
So, once back home, I spent some time figuring out the possibility to replace my lxc setup, with that of systemd-nspawn. Apart from a minor bug, almost everything else seems to work find with systemd-nspawn.
So, following is the config detail of my container, as used in lxc. And to replace lxc, I need to fill is almost all of it with systemd-nspawn.
rrs@learner:~$ sudo cat /var/lib/lxc/deb-template/config
# Template used to create this container: /usr/share/lxc/templates/lxc-debian
# Parameters passed to the template:
# For additional config options, please look at lxc.container.conf(5)
# CPU
lxc.cgroup.cpuset.cpus = 0,1
lxc.cgroup.cpu.shares = 1234
# Mem
lxc.cgroup.memory.limit_in_bytes = 2000M
lxc.cgroup.memory.soft_limit_in_bytes = 1500M
# Network
lxc.network.type = veth
lxc.network.hwaddr = 00:16:3e:0c:c5:d4
lxc.network.flags = up
lxc.network.link = lxcbr0
# Root file system
lxc.rootfs = /var/lib/lxc/deb-template/rootfs
# Common configuration
lxc.include = /usr/share/lxc/config/debian.common.conf
# Container specific configuration
lxc.mount = /var/lib/lxc/deb-template/fstab
lxc.utsname = deb-template
lxc.arch = amd64
# For apt
lxc.mount.entry = /var/cache/apt/archives var/cache/apt/archives none defaults,bind 0 0
lxc.mount.entry = /var/tmp/lxc var/tmp/lxc none defaults,bind 0 0
2015-07-20 / 16:28:58 ♒♒♒ ☺
The equivalent of the above, in systemd-nspawn is:
sudo systemd-nspawn -n -b --machine deb-template --network-bridge=lxcbr0 --bind /var/cache/apt/archives/
The only missing bit is CPU and Memory, which I’m yet to try, is documented as doable with the systemctl –property= interface
--property=
Set a unit property on the scope unit to register for the machine. This only
applies if the machine is run in its own scope unit, i.e. if --keep-unit is not
used. Takes unit property assignments in the same format as systemctl
set-property. This is useful to set memory limits and similar for machines.
With all this in place, using containers under systemd is a breeze.
rrs@learner:~/Community/Packaging/multipath-tools (experimental)$ sudo machinectl list
MACHINE CLASS SERVICE
deb-template container nspawn
1 machines listed.
2015-07-20 / 16:44:07 ♒♒♒ ☺
rrs@learner:~/Community/Packaging/multipath-tools (experimental)$ sudo machinectl status deb-template
deb-template
Since: Mon 2015-07-20 16:13:58 IST; 30min ago
Leader: 9064 (systemd)
Service: nspawn; class container
Root: /var/lib/lxc/deb-template/rootfs
Iface: lxcbr0
Address: 172.16.10.12
fe80::706d:e4ff:fec5:bfc8%3
OS: Debian GNU/Linux stretch/sid
Unit: machine-deb\x2dtemplate.scope
├─9064 /lib/systemd/systemd --system --deserialize 14
└─system.slice
├─systemd-journald.service
│ └─9092 /lib/systemd/systemd-journald
├─ssh.service
│ └─9160 /usr/sbin/sshd -D
└─console-getty.service
├─9166 /bin/login --
├─9171 -bash
└─9226 dhclient host0
Jul 20 16:13:58 learner systemd[1]: Started Container deb-template.
Jul 20 16:13:58 learner systemd[1]: Starting Container deb-template.
2015-07-20 / 16:44:15 ♒♒♒ ☺