Linux Containers - Incus

23 Feb 2024

Introduction¶

The Incus team is pleased to announce the release of Incus 0.6!

This second release of 2024 features a number of improvements, both large and small.

It comes with a completely new storage driver for cluster users, import/export support for storage buckets, a number of improvements for OVN users, support for new container kernel features, quite a few improvements to the migration tooling and more!

As usual, you can try it for yourself online: https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/try-it/

Enjoy!

New features¶

Clustered LVM storage driver¶

A new storage driver named lvmcluster has been added.

As the name implies, this is for clustered use of the LVM storage driver.
This relies on llvmlockd and a lock manager like sanlock to provide concurrent access to a shared storage device across a cluster.

This is aimed at anyone who wants to run an Incus cluster and use a shared storage device like a FiberChannel SAN, iSCSI export, NVMEoF/NVMEoTCP disk, ...

With the ability of having the same storage available on all servers comes support for much faster live migrations, server evacuations and the ability to automatically recover should a server suddenly die.

image|622x500

Documentation: https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/reference/storage_lvm/#lvmcluster-driver-in-incus

Storage bucket backup and import¶

It is now possible to backup a full storage bucket and later re-import back into Incus.

stgraber@dakara:~$ incus storage bucket create default foo
Storage bucket foo created
Admin access key: HD2GWC1KX693MFVT3P30
Admin secret key: tX9+G9G5UlcuT21yatKIUImSGvcXzPyA7ONgkjUv

stgraber@dakara:~$ dd if=/dev/random of=out.img bs=4M count=10
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
41943040 bytes (42 MB, 40 MiB) copied, 0.0975758 s, 430 MB/s
stgraber@dakara:~$ s3cmd --host=127.0.0.1:8445 --host-bucket=127.0.0.1:8445 --no-check-certificate --access_key=HD2GWC1KX693MFVT3P30 --secret_key=tX9+G9G5UlcuT21yatKIUImSGvcXzPyA7ONgkjUv put out.img s3://foo
upload: 'out.img' -> 's3://foo/out.img'  [part 1 of 3, 15MB] [1 of 1]
 15728640 of 15728640   100% in    0s   262.42 MB/s  done
upload: 'out.img' -> 's3://foo/out.img'  [part 2 of 3, 15MB] [1 of 1]
 15728640 of 15728640   100% in    0s   241.54 MB/s  done
upload: 'out.img' -> 's3://foo/out.img'  [part 3 of 3, 10MB] [1 of 1]
 10485760 of 10485760   100% in    0s   241.99 MB/s  done
stgraber@dakara:~$ s3cmd --host=127.0.0.1:8445 --host-bucket=127.0.0.1:8445 --no-check-certificate --access_key=HD2GWC1KX693MFVT3P30 --secret_key=tX9+G9G5UlcuT21yatKIUImSGvcXzPyA7ONgkjUv ls s3://foo
2024-02-23 03:26     41943040  s3://foo/out.img

stgraber@dakara:~$ incus storage bucket export default foo
Backup exported successfully!
stgraber@dakara:~$ incus storage bucket delete default foo
Storage bucket foo deleted

stgraber@dakara:~$ incus storage bucket import default backup.tar.gz
stgraber@dakara:~$ s3cmd --host=127.0.0.1:8445 --host-bucket=127.0.0.1:8445 --no-check-certificate --access_key=HD2GWC1KX693MFVT3P30 --secret_key=tX9+G9G5UlcuT21yatKIUImSGvcXzPyA7ONgkjUv ls s3://foo
2024-02-23 03:27     41943040  s3://foo/out.img

API: https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/rest-api-spec/#/storage/storage_pool_buckets_backups_post

Listing image across all projects¶

Just as it's possible to list instances across all projects using the --all-projects, it's now possible to do the same but for images.

stgraber@dakara:~$ incus image list --all-projects
+---------+-------+--------------+--------+------------------------------------------+--------------+-----------------+-----------+-------------------------------+
| PROJECT | ALIAS | FINGERPRINT  | PUBLIC |               DESCRIPTION                | ARCHITECTURE |      TYPE       |   SIZE    |          UPLOAD DATE          |
+---------+-------+--------------+--------+------------------------------------------+--------------+-----------------+-----------+-------------------------------+
| default |       | 256f59a72af5 | no     | Ubuntu jammy amd64 (20240222_07:42)      | x86_64       | VIRTUAL-MACHINE | 267.19MiB | Feb 23, 2024 at 12:27am (UTC) |
+---------+-------+--------------+--------+------------------------------------------+--------------+-----------------+-----------+-------------------------------+
| default |       | 0941e441dbb9 | no     | Alpine edge amd64 (20240222_13:00)       | x86_64       | CONTAINER       | 2.93MiB   | Feb 23, 2024 at 12:27am (UTC) |
+---------+-------+--------------+--------+------------------------------------------+--------------+-----------------+-----------+-------------------------------+
| default |       | d5fc6024f0fa | no     | Openwrt snapshot amd64 (20240222_11:57)  | x86_64       | CONTAINER       | 3.50MiB   | Feb 23, 2024 at 2:55am (UTC)  |
+---------+-------+--------------+--------+------------------------------------------+--------------+-----------------+-----------+-------------------------------+
| demo    |       | f44a6b4e56f4 | no     | Archlinux current amd64 (20240222_04:18) | x86_64       | CONTAINER       | 188.86MiB | Feb 23, 2024 at 3:32am (UTC)  |
+---------+-------+--------------+--------+------------------------------------------+--------------+-----------------+-----------+-------------------------------+

Over the API, this is done by passing ?all-projects=true.

binfmt_misc in unprivileged containers¶

Linux 6.7 added support for mounting of binfmt_misc inside of unprivileged containers.

Incus 0.6 will detect kernels that support this feature and when they do, it will no longer bind-mount binfmt_misc from the host system but instead allow it to be mounted from within the container.

stgraber@castiana:~$ incus launch images:ubuntu/22.04 foo
Launching foo
stgraber@castiana:~$ incus exec foo bash
root@foo:~# uname -a
Linux foo 6.7.4-zabbly+ #debian12 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Mon Feb  5 23:37:46 UTC 2024 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
root@foo:~# mount -t binfmt_misc binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/
root@foo:~# ls -lh /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/
total 0
--w------- 1 root root 0 Feb 23 03:46 register
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 23 03:46 status

The binfmt_misc filesystem is used to define custom binary formats for emulation.
It's most notably used by qemu-user-static as a way to run binaries of other architectures.

Control over shared block storage volumes¶

A new security.shared volume storage option has been introduced to control whether a custom block volume should be allowed to be used by multiple instances.

It is now required to set that configuration key prior to adding a custom block volume to a profile or add it directly to multiple virtual machines.

stgraber@castiana:~$ incus config device add lvm01 shared disk pool=default source=shared-lvm io.bus=nvme
Device shared added to lvm01

stgraber@castiana:~$ incus config device add lvm02 shared disk pool=default source=shared-lvm io.bus=nvme
Error: Failed add validation for device "shared": Cannot add un-shared custom storage block volume to more than one instance

stgraber@castiana:~$ incus storage volume set default shared-lvm security.shared=true

stgraber@castiana:~$ incus config device add lvm02 shared disk pool=default source=shared-lvm io.bus=nvme
Device shared added to lvm02
stgraber@castiana:~$ incus config device add lvm03 shared disk pool=default source=shared-lvm io.bus=nvme
Device shared added to lvm03
stgraber@castiana:~$ incus start lvm01 lvm02 lvm03

OVN logical router name in network info¶

To make it easier to see what's going on within OVN, incus network info now gives you the name of the logical router for a particular network.

root@abydos:~# incus network info default
Name: default
MAC address: 00:16:3e:38:dd:28
MTU: 1500
State: up
Type: broadcast

IP addresses:
  inet  10.180.103.1/24 (link)
  inet6 2602:fc62:a:1004::1/64 (link)

Network usage:
  Bytes received: 0B
  Bytes sent: 0B
  Packets received: 0
  Packets sent: 0

OVN:
  Chassis: abydos
  Logical router: incus-net6-lr

File ownership and permissions in image templates¶

Template files can now have a uid, gid and mode set on them.
This can be particularly useful if a template is meant to be an executable shell script.

stgraber@castiana:~$ incus config metadata show foo
architecture: amd64
creation_date: 1708588077
expiry_date: 1711180077
properties:
  architecture: amd64
  description: Ubuntu jammy amd64 (20240222_07:42)
  name: ubuntu-jammy-amd64-default-20240222_07:42
  os: ubuntu
  release: jammy
  serial: "20240222_07:42"
  variant: default
templates:
  /etc/hostname:
    when:
    - create
    - copy
    create_only: false
    template: hostname.tpl
    properties: {}
  /etc/hosts:
    when:
    - create
    - copy
    create_only: false
    template: hosts.tpl
    properties: {}
  /root/hello.sh:
    when:
    - start
    create_only: false
    template: hello.tpl
    properties: {}
    uid: "1000"
    gid: "2000"
    mode: "0755"

stgraber@castiana:~$ incus config template show foo hello.tpl
#!/bin/sh
echo "Hello world!"

stgraber@castiana:~$ incus start foo
stgraber@castiana:~$ incus exec foo bash
root@foo:~# ls -lh /root/hello.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ubuntu 2000 30 Feb 23 04:07 /root/hello.sh
root@foo:~# /root/hello.sh
Hello world!

Documentation: https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/reference/image_format/#template-rules

Encrypted EC client certificate keys¶

For those interacting with remote Incus servers, you may not know that it's possible to protect your Incus private key with a password.

Up until now, this was only possible for RSA keys, but with Incus 0.6, we're now adding support for EC keys too. That's particularly relevant as EC keys have been the default for a while now.

Documentation: https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/authentication/#encrypting-local-keys

Worth noting that if using this feature, you'll likely also want to make use of the recently introduced "keepalive mode" as this will then significantly reduce the number of password prompts you'll get while using Incus.

lxd-to-incus improvements¶

Lastly, lxd-to-incus saw a number of improvements:

Support for Void Linux
Detection of the boot.debug_edk2 configuration key
Handling of OVN SSL database connections
Automatic clearing of the simplestreams cache during migration

Complete changelog¶

Here is a complete list of all changes in this release:

Full commit list

incusd/instance/qemu/qmp: Don't risk blocking QMP on eject
github: Switch to minio deb and pin working version
github: Use stable MicroCeph
incusd/db: Fix error handling in CreateNetworkPeer
incusd/apparmor: Allow more mounts in unprivileged containers
Translated using Weblate (Portuguese (Brazil))
incusd/instance/qemu/agent-loader: Handle legacy lxd-agent-loader
incusd/device/disk: Use genisoimage when mkisofs can't be found
shared/api: Add example of Chassis in NetworkStateOVN
doc/rest-api: Refresh swagger YAML
api: network_state_ovn_lr
shared/api: Add LogicalRouter field to NetworkStateOVN
incusd/network/ovn: Expose LogicalRouter name
incus: Add OVN logical router name
i18n: Update translation templates
doc/rest-api: Refresh swagger YAML
scripts/bash: Don't follow aliases
Translated using Weblate (Japanese)
test: Adapt test_database_no_disk_space() to newer libraft versions
incus/launch: Fix --console
api: image_template_permissions
doc: Add uid/gid/mode to image template metadata
shared/api: Add owner/permission fields to ImageMetadataTemplate
doc/rest-api: Refresh swagger YAML
incusd/instance/lxc: Add support for template ownership/mode
incus-agent: Add support for template ownership/mode
lxd-to-incus: Add comment
lxd-to-incus: Add cache cleanup logic
.github: Bump minimum Go version to 1.21
Makefile: Bump minimum Go version to 1.21
gomod: Update dependencies
doc: Bump minimum Go version to 1.21
Translated using Weblate (French)
incusd/daemon: Fix log format
incusd/sys: Sort kernel features
incusd/sys: Add doc strings
incusd/checkfeature: Add unprivileged binfmt detection
incusd/sys: Add UnprivBinfmt
incusd/daemon: Detect unprivileged binfmt_misc
incusd/api_1.0: Add unpriv_binfmt kernel feature
incusd/instance/lxc: Support unpriv binfmt_misc
incusd/apparmor: Support unpriv binfmt_misc
Translated using Weblate (Italian)
completion: support returning non-incus remotes
incus/image: add dynamic command line completions
shared/cliconfig: Support SSH encrypted keys
tests: Add crypto/ssh
doc/remotes: Add mention of keepalive
doc: Add Ansible to wordlist
doc/authentication: Hints on encrypting client key
api: images_all_projects
lxd-to-incus: Indicate what existing configuration was found
shared/api: Add project property to Image
client: Add GetImagesAllProjects
incusd/images: Add support for all_projects
doc/rest-api: Refresh swagger YAML
incus/image: Add --all-projects flag to list
i18n: Update translation templates
shared/cliconfig: Fix static analysis
gomod: Update dependencies
Makefile: Pin rpc2 version due to OVN issue
incusd/instance/qemu: Re-shuffle agent NIC handling
incusd/instance/qemu/agent-loader: Handle SELinux
incus/config: add completions
incus-agent: Load virtio_net before configuring NICs
incus: Run gofmt
doc/storage/lvm: Cleanup tables
incusd/patches: Move lvm.vg.force_reuse to be server-specific
incusd/db: Mark lvm.vg.force_reuse as server-specific
doc/faq: Add mention of the -mtu network interfaces
incusd/device: Bump base VM filesystem volume to 500MiB
incusd/storage: Create rootfs dir on empty instances
incusd/storage/quota: Don't fail on missing project
incusd/instances: Use correct project on cross-project copy
incusd/patches: Fix bad SQL query
incusd/instances: Don't bypass instance limit check
Added translation using Weblate (Portuguese)
incus-agent: Re-order imports
api: Add storage_bucket_backup extension
shared/api: Add storage bucket backup
incusd/db: Add storage bucket backup functions
incusd/db/operation: Add storage volume backup types
incusd/lifecycle: Add storage bucket backup events
incusd/project: Add StorageBucket function
incusd/storage/s3: Add transfer manager
incusd: Add storage bucket backup
client: Add storage bucket backup
incus: Add storage bucket import/export
doc/rest-api: Refresh swagger YAML
i18n: Update translation templates
test: Add storage bucket backup
client: Remove ceph-specific logic
incusd/storage/s3: Fix typo
incus: Fix import shadowing
incus: Fix comments on exported functions
client: Fix comments on exported functions
incusd: Fix import shadowing
incusd: Fix comments on exported functions
incusd/cluster: Make remote storage volume logic generic
incusd/db: Don't hardcode remote storage drivers
incusd/storage_volumes: Don't hardcode ceph
incusd/instances: Update ceph-specific comment
incusd/cluster: Update ceph-specific comment
incusd/instances: Generalize Ceph logic
lxd-to-incus: Support SSL authentication in OVN
lxd-to-incus: Don't fail on missing OVN bridge mapping
lxd-to-incus: Ignore OVN chassis external_ids
lxd-to-incus: Add boot.debug_edk2 to deprecated keys
lxd-to-incus: Support Void Linux
cmd/incusd: Disable the architecture check on incus cp/mv
incusd/instance: Disable the architecture check on incus cp/mv
api: storage_lvm_cluster
incus/admin/init: Add LVM cluster logic
i18n: Update translation templates
lxd-to-incus: Add LVM cluster
doc: Add LVM cluster
shared/api: Add cephobject
shared/api: Add lvmcluster
doc/rest-api: Refresh swagger YAML
incusd/storage/lvm: Add clustered LVM
incusd/storage/lvm: Fix import shadowing
incusd/storage/lvm: Tweak locking in cluster
internal/server/device/config: Don't include empty values
internal/server/device/config: Fix return values of Update function
api: Add shared_custom_block_volumes API extension
doc/reference: Add security.shared config key
instance/server/device: Validate shared block devices
internal/server/storage: Handle security.shared update
internal/server/storage: Allow security.shared key for custom block volumes
internal/server/storage/drivers: Handle security.shared in fillVolumeConfig
incusd/instance/qemu: Cap hotplug CPU slots to 64
incusd/storage/lvm: Make gofmt happy
shared/subprocess: Improve error handling
incusd/instance/qemu: Improve error handling
incusd/network/ovs: Wait for bridge interface to appear
incusd/storage/zfs: Fix refresh of VM volumes
internal/instance: Fix volatile key definitions
doc: Update configs
incusd/network/ovn: Extend validateExternalSubnet to allow uplink subnets
incusd/network/ovn: Add static routes to load-balancer and forwards
gomod: Update dependencies

Documentation¶

The Incus documentation can be found at:
https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/

Packages¶

There are no official Incus packages as Incus upstream only releases regular release tarballs. Below are some available options to get Incus up and running.

Installing the Incus server on Linux¶

Incus is available for most common Linux distributions. You'll find detailed installation instructions in our documentation.

https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/installing/

Homebrew package for the Incus client¶

The client tool is available through HomeBrew for both Linux and MacOS.

https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/incus

Chocolatey package for the Incus client¶

The client tool is available through Chocolatey for Windows users.

https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/incus/0.6

Winget package for the Incus client¶

The client tool is also available through Winget for Windows users.

https://winstall.app/apps/LinuxContainers.Incus

Support¶

At this early stage, each Incus release will only be supported up until the next release comes out. This will change in a few months as we are planning an LTS release to coincide with the LTS releases of LXC and LXCFS.

Community support is provided at: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org
Commercial support is available through: https://zabbly.com/incus
Bugs can be reported at: https://github.com/lxc/incus/issues

Contents

Incus 0.6 has been released

Incus 0.6 has been released¶