lxc.conf(5)

NAME
lxc.conf - linux container configuration file

DESCRIPTION
The linux containers (lxc) are always created before being used. This creation defines a set of system resources to be virtualized / isolated when a process is using the container. By default, the pids, sysv ipc and mount points are virtualized and isolated. The other system resources are shared across containers, until they are explicitly defined in the configuration file. For example, if there is no network configuration, the network will be shared between the creator of the container and the container itself, but if the network is specified, a new network stack is created for the container and the container can no longer use the network of its ancestor.

The configuration file defines the different system resources to be assigned for the container. At present, the utsname, the network, the mount points, the root file system and the control groups are supported.

Each option in the configuration file has the form key = value fitting in one line. The '#' character means the line is a comment.

  ARCHITECTURE
Allows to set the architecture for the container. For example, set a 32bits architecture for a container running 32bits binaries on a 64bits host. That fix the container scripts which rely on the architecture to do some work like downloading the packages.

\FClxc.arch\F[]
    Specify the architecture for the container. Valid options are \FCx86\F[], \FCi686\F[], \FCx86_64\F[], \FCamd64\F[]

  HOSTNAME
The utsname section defines the hostname to be set for the container. That means the container can set its own hostname without changing the one from the system. That makes the hostname private for the container.

\FClxc.utsname\F[]
    specify the hostname for the container

  STOP SIGNAL
Allows to specify signal name or number, sent by lxc-stop to shutdown the container. Different init systems could use different signals to perform clean shutdown sequence. Option allows signal to be specified in kill(1) fashion, e.g. SIGKILL, SIGRTMIN+14, SIGRTMAX-10 or plain number.

\FClxc.stopsignal\F[]
    specify the signal used to stop the container

  NETWORK
The network section defines how the network is virtualized in the container. The network virtualization acts at layer two. In order to use the network virtualization, parameters must be specified to define the network interfaces of the container. Several virtual interfaces can be assigned and used in a container even if the system has only one physical network interface.

\FClxc.network.type\F[]
    specify what kind of network virtualization to be used for the container. Each time a \FClxc.network.type\F[] field is found a new round of network configuration begins. In this way, several network virtualization types can be specified for the same container, as well as assigning several network interfaces for one container. The different virtualization types can be: \FCempty:\F[] will create only the loopback interface. \FCveth:\F[] a peer network device is created with one side assigned to the container and the other side is attached to a bridge specified by the \FClxc.network.link\F[]. If the bridge is not specified, then the veth pair device will be created but not attached to any bridge. Otherwise, the bridge has to be setup before on the system, lxc won't handle any configuration outside of the container. By default lxc choose a name for the network device belonging to the outside of the container, this name is handled by lxc, but if you wish to handle this name yourself, you can tell lxc to set a specific name with the \FClxc.network.veth.pair\F[] option. \FCvlan:\F[] a vlan interface is linked with the interface specified by the \FClxc.network.link\F[] and assigned to the container. The vlan identifier is specified with the option \FClxc.network.vlan.id\F[]. \FCmacvlan:\F[] a macvlan interface is linked with the interface specified by the \FClxc.network.link\F[] and assigned to the container. \FClxc.network.macvlan.mode\F[] specifies the mode the macvlan will use to communicate between different macvlan on the same upper device. The accepted modes are \FCprivate\F[], the device never communicates with any other device on the same upper_dev (default), \FCvepa\F[], the new Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator (VEPA) mode, it assumes that the adjacent bridge returns all frames where both source and destination are local to the macvlan port, i.e. the bridge is set up as a reflective relay. Broadcast frames coming in from the upper_dev get flooded to all macvlan interfaces in VEPA mode, local frames are not delivered locallay, or \FCbridge\F[], it provides the behavior of a simple bridge between different macvlan interfaces on the same port. Frames from one interface to another one get delivered directly and are not sent out externally. Broadcast frames get flooded to all other bridge ports and to the external interface, but when they come back from a reflective relay, we don't deliver them again. Since we know all the MAC addresses, the macvlan bridge mode does not require learning or STP like the bridge module does. \FCphys:\F[] an already existing interface specified by the \FClxc.network.link\F[] is assigned to the container.

\FClxc.network.flags\F[]
    specify an action to do for the network. \FCup:\F[] activates the interface.

\FClxc.network.link\F[]
    specify the interface to be used for real network traffic.

\FClxc.network.name\F[]
    the interface name is dynamically allocated, but if another name is needed because the configuration files being used by the container use a generic name, eg. eth0, this option will rename the interface in the container.

\FClxc.network.hwaddr\F[]
    the interface mac address is dynamically allocated by default to the virtual interface, but in some cases, this is needed to resolve a mac address conflict or to always have the same link-local ipv6 address

\FClxc.network.ipv4\F[]
    specify the ipv4 address to assign to the virtualized interface. Several lines specify several ipv4 addresses. The address is in format x.y.z.t/m, eg. 192.168.1.123/24. The broadcast address should be specified on the same line, right after the ipv4 address.

\FClxc.network.ipv4.gateway\F[]
    specify the ipv4 address to use as the gateway inside the container. The address is in format x.y.z.t, eg. 192.168.1.123. Can also have the special value \FCauto\F[], which means to take the primary address from the bridge interface (as specified by the \FClxc.network.link\F[] option) and use that as the gateway. \FCauto\F[] is only available when using the \FCveth\F[] and \FCmacvlan\F[] network types.

\FClxc.network.ipv6\F[]
    specify the ipv6 address to assign to the virtualized interface. Several lines specify several ipv6 addresses. The address is in format x::y/m, eg. 2003:db8:1:0:214:1234:fe0b:3596/64

\FClxc.network.ipv6.gateway\F[]
    specify the ipv6 address to use as the gateway inside the container. The address is in format x::y, eg. 2003:db8:1:0::1 Can also have the special value \FCauto\F[], which means to take the primary address from the bridge interface (as specified by the \FClxc.network.link\F[] option) and use that as the gateway. \FCauto\F[] is only available when using the \FCveth\F[] and \FCmacvlan\F[] network types.

\FClxc.network.script.up\F[]
    add a configuration option to specify a script to be executed after creating and configuring the network used from the host side. The following arguments are passed to the script: container name and config section name (net) Additional arguments depend on the config section employing a script hook; the following are used by the network system: execution context (up), network type (empty/veth/macvlan/phys), Depending on the network type, other arguments may be passed: veth/macvlan/phys. And finally (host-sided) device name.

\FClxc.network.script.down\F[]
    add a configuration option to specify a script to be executed before destroying the network used from the host side. The following arguments are passed to the script: container name and config section name (net) Additional arguments depend on the config section employing a script hook; the following are used by the network system: execution context (down), network type (empty/veth/macvlan/phys), Depending on the network type, other arguments may be passed: veth/macvlan/phys. And finally (host-sided) device name.

  NEW PSEUDO TTY INSTANCE (DEVPTS)
For stricter isolation the container can have its own private instance of the pseudo tty.

\FClxc.pts\F[]
    If set, the container will have a new pseudo tty instance, making this private to it. The value specifies the maximum number of pseudo ttys allowed for a pts instance (this limitation is not implemented yet).

  CONTAINER SYSTEM CONSOLE
If the container is configured with a root filesystem and the inittab file is setup to use the console, you may want to specify where goes the output of this console.

\FClxc.console\F[]
    Specify a path to a file where the console output will be written. The keyword 'none' will simply disable the console. This is dangerous once if have a rootfs with a console device file where the application can write, the messages will fall in the host.

  CONSOLE THROUGH THE TTYS
If the container is configured with a root filesystem and the inittab file is setup to launch a getty on the ttys. This option will specify the number of ttys to be available for the container. The number of getty in the inittab file of the container should not be greater than the number of ttys specified in this configuration file, otherwise the excess getty sessions will die and respawn indefinitly giving annoying messages on the console.

\FClxc.tty\F[]
    Specify the number of tty to make available to the container.

  CONSOLE DEVICES LOCATION
LXC consoles are provided through Unix98 PTYs created on the host and bind-mounted over the expected devices in the container. By default, they are bind-mounted over \FC/dev/console\F[] and \FC/dev/ttyN\F[]. This can prevent package upgrades in the guest. Therefore you can specify a directory location (under \FC/dev\F[] under which LXC will create the files and bind-mount over them. These will then be symbolically linked to \FC/dev/console\F[] and \FC/dev/ttyN\F[]. A package upgrade can then succeed as it is able to remove and replace the symbolic links.

\FClxc.devttydir\F[]
    Specify a directory under \FC/dev\F[] under which to create the container console devices.

  /DEV DIRECTORY
By default, lxc does nothing with the container's \FC/dev\F[]. This allows the container's \FC/dev\F[] to be set up as needed in the container rootfs. If lxc.autodev is set to 1, then after mounting the container's rootfs LXC will mount a fresh tmpfs under \FC/dev\F[] (limited to 100k) and fill in a minimal set of initial devices. This is generally required when starting a container containing a "systemd" based "init" but may be optional at other times. Addional devices in the containers /dev directory may be created through the use of the \FClxc.hook.autodev\F[] hook.

\FClxc.autodev\F[]
    Set this to 1 to have LXC mount and populate a minimal \FC/dev\F[] when starting the container.

  ENABLE KMSG SYMLINK
Enable creating /dev/kmsg as symlink to /dev/console. This defaults to 1.

\FClxc.kmsg\F[]
    Set this to 0 to disable /dev/kmsg symlinking.

  MOUNT POINTS
The mount points section specifies the different places to be mounted. These mount points will be private to the container and won't be visible by the processes running outside of the container. This is useful to mount /etc, /var or /home for examples.

\FClxc.mount\F[]
    specify a file location in the \FCfstab\F[] format, containing the mount informations. If the rootfs is an image file or a device block and the fstab is used to mount a point somewhere in this rootfs, the path of the rootfs mount point should be prefixed with the \FC/usr/lib/lxc/rootfs\F[] default path or the value of \FClxc.rootfs.mount\F[] if specified.

\FClxc.mount.entry\F[]
    specify a mount point corresponding to a line in the fstab format.

  ROOT FILE SYSTEM
The root file system of the container can be different than that of the host system.

\FClxc.rootfs\F[]
    specify the root file system for the container. It can be an image file, a directory or a block device. If not specified, the container shares its root file system with the host.

\FClxc.rootfs.mount\F[]
    where to recursively bind \FClxc.rootfs\F[] before pivoting. This is to ensure success of the pivot_root(8) syscall. Any directory suffices, the default should generally work.

\FClxc.pivotdir\F[]
    where to pivot the original root file system under \FClxc.rootfs\F[], specified relatively to that. The default is \FCmnt\F[]. It is created if necessary, and also removed after unmounting everything from it during container setup.

  CONTROL GROUP
The control group section contains the configuration for the different subsystem. lxc does not check the correctness of the subsystem name. This has the disadvantage of not detecting configuration errors until the container is started, but has the advantage of permitting any future subsystem.

\FClxc.cgroup.[subsystem name]\F[]
    specify the control group value to be set. The subsystem name is the literal name of the control group subsystem. The permitted names and the syntax of their values is not dictated by LXC, instead it depends on the features of the Linux kernel running at the time the container is started, eg. \FClxc.cgroup.cpuset.cpus\F[]

  CAPABILITIES
The capabilities can be dropped in the container if this one is run as root.

\FClxc.cap.drop\F[]
    Specify the capability to be dropped in the container. A single line defining several capabilities with a space separation is allowed. The format is the lower case of the capability definition without the "CAP_" prefix, eg. CAP_SYS_MODULE should be specified as sys_module. See capabilities(7),

  UID MAPPINGS
A container can be started in a private user namespace with user and group id mappings. For instance, you can map userid 0 in the container to userid 200000 on the host. The root user in the container will be privileged in the container, but unprivileged on the host. Normally a system container will want a range of ids, so you would map, for instance, user and group ids 0 through 20,000 in the container to the ids 200,000 through 220,000.

\FClxc.id_map\F[]
    Four values must be provided. First a character, either 'u', or 'g', to specify whether user or group ids are being mapped. Next is the first userid as seen in the user namespace of the container. Next is the userid as seen on the host. Finally, a range indicating the number of consecutive ids to map.

  STARTUP HOOKS
Startup hooks are programs or scripts which can be executed at various times in a container's lifetime.

\FClxc.hook.pre-start\F[]
    A hook to be run in the host's namespace before the container ttys, consoles, or mounts are up.

\FClxc.hook.pre-mount\F[]
    A hook to be run in the container's fs namespace but before the rootfs has been set up. This allows for manipulation of the rootfs, i.e. to mount an encrypted filesystem. Mounts done in this hook will not be reflected on the host (apart from mounts propagation), so they will be automatically cleaned up when the container shuts down.

\FClxc.hook.mount\F[]
    A hook to be run in the container's namespace after mounting has been done, but before the pivot_root.

\FClxc.hook.autodev\F[]
    A hook to be run in the container's namespace after mounting has been done and after any mount hooks have run, but before the pivot_root, if \FClxc.autodev\F[] == 1. The purpose of this hook is to assist in populating the /dev directory of the container when using the autodev option for systemd based containers. The container's /dev directory is relative to the ${\FCLXC_ROOTFS_MOUNT\F[]} environment variable available when the hook is run.

\FClxc.hook.start\F[]
    A hook to be run in the container's namespace immediately before executing the container's init. This requires the program to be available in the container.

\FClxc.hook.post-stop\F[]
    A hook to be run in the host's namespace after the container has been shut down.

  STARTUP HOOKS ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
A number of environment variables are made available to the startup hooks to provide configuration information and assist in the functioning of the hooks. Not all variables are valid in all contexts. In particular, all paths are relative to the host system and, as such, not valid during the \FClxc.hook.start\F[] hook.

\FCLXC_NAME\F[]
    The LXC name of the container. Useful for logging messages in commmon log environments. [\FC-n\F[]]

\FCLXC_CONFIG_FILE\F[]
    Host relative path to the container configuration file. This gives the container to reference the original, top level, configuration file for the container in order to locate any addotional configuration information not otherwise made available. [\FC-f\F[]]

\FCLXC_CONSOLE\F[]
    The path to the console output of the container if not NULL. [\FC-c\F[]] [\FClxc.console\F[]]

\FCLXC_CONSOLE_LOGPATH\F[]
    The path to the console log output of the container if not NULL. [\FC-L\F[]]

\FCLXC_ROOTFS_MOUNT\F[]
    The mount location to which the container is initially bound. This will be the host relative path to the container rootfs for the container instance being started and is where changes should be made for that instance. [\FClxc.rootfs.mount\F[]]

\FCLXC_ROOTFS_PATH\F[]
    The host relative path to the container root which has been mounted to the rootfs.mount location. [\FClxc.rootfs\F[]]

EXAMPLES
In addition to the few examples given below, you will find some other examples of configuration file in /usr/doc/lxc-0.9.0/examples

  NETWORK
This configuration sets up a container to use a veth pair device with one side plugged to a bridge br0 (which has been configured before on the system by the administrator). The virtual network device visible in the container is renamed to eth0.

\FC
	lxc.utsname = myhostname
	lxc.network.type = veth
	lxc.network.flags = up
	lxc.network.link = br0
	lxc.network.name = eth0
	lxc.network.hwaddr = 4a:49:43:49:79:bf
	lxc.network.ipv4 = 10.2.3.5/24 10.2.3.255
	lxc.network.ipv6 = 2003:db8:1:0:214:1234:fe0b:3597
      \F[]

  UID/GID MAPPING
This configuration will map both user and group ids in the range 0-9999 in the container to the ids 100000-109999 on the host.

\FC
	lxc.id_map = u 0 100000 10000
	lxc.id_map = g 0 100000 10000
      \F[]

  CONTROL GROUP
This configuration will setup several control groups for the application, cpuset.cpus restricts usage of the defined cpu, cpus.share prioritize the control group, devices.allow makes usable the specified devices.

\FC
	lxc.cgroup.cpuset.cpus = 0,1
	lxc.cgroup.cpu.shares = 1234
	lxc.cgroup.devices.deny = a
	lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 1:3 rw
	lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = b 8:0 rw
      \F[]

  COMPLEX CONFIGURATION
This example show a complex configuration making a complex network stack, using the control groups, setting a new hostname, mounting some locations and a changing root file system.

\FC
	lxc.utsname = complex
	lxc.network.type = veth
	lxc.network.flags = up
	lxc.network.link = br0
	lxc.network.hwaddr = 4a:49:43:49:79:bf
	lxc.network.ipv4 = 10.2.3.5/24 10.2.3.255
	lxc.network.ipv6 = 2003:db8:1:0:214:1234:fe0b:3597
	lxc.network.ipv6 = 2003:db8:1:0:214:5432:feab:3588
	lxc.network.type = macvlan
	lxc.network.flags = up
	lxc.network.link = eth0
	lxc.network.hwaddr = 4a:49:43:49:79:bd
	lxc.network.ipv4 = 10.2.3.4/24
	lxc.network.ipv4 = 192.168.10.125/24
	lxc.network.ipv6 = 2003:db8:1:0:214:1234:fe0b:3596
	lxc.network.type = phys
	lxc.network.flags = up
	lxc.network.link = dummy0
	lxc.network.hwaddr = 4a:49:43:49:79:ff
	lxc.network.ipv4 = 10.2.3.6/24
	lxc.network.ipv6 = 2003:db8:1:0:214:1234:fe0b:3297
	lxc.cgroup.cpuset.cpus = 0,1
	lxc.cgroup.cpu.shares = 1234
	lxc.cgroup.devices.deny = a
	lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 1:3 rw
	lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = b 8:0 rw
	lxc.mount = /etc/fstab.complex
	lxc.mount.entry = /lib /root/myrootfs/lib none ro,bind 0 0
	lxc.rootfs = /mnt/rootfs.complex
	lxc.cap.drop = sys_module mknod setuid net_raw
	lxc.cap.drop = mac_override
      \F[]

SEE ALSO
chroot(1), pivot_root(8), \FCfstab\F[](5)

SEE ALSO
lxc(1), lxc-create(1), lxc-destroy(1), lxc-start(1), lxc-stop(1), lxc-execute(1), lxc-kill(1), lxc-console(1), lxc-monitor(1), lxc-wait(1), lxc-cgroup(1), lxc-ls(1), lxc-ps(1), lxc-info(1), lxc-freeze(1), lxc-unfreeze(1), lxc-attach(1), lxc.conf(5)

AUTHOR
Daniel Lezcano <\FCdaniel.lezcano@free.fr\F[]>