README.md

   1 # lxcfs
   2
   3 ## Introduction
   4 LXCFS is a small FUSE filesystem written with the intention of making Linux
   5 containers feel more like a virtual machine. It started as a side-project of
   6 `LXC` but is useable by any runtime.
   7
   8 LXCFS will take care that the information provided by crucial files in `procfs`
   9 such as:
  10
  11 ```
  12 /proc/cpuinfo
  13 /proc/diskstats
  14 /proc/meminfo
  15 /proc/stat
  16 /proc/swaps
  17 /proc/uptime
  18 /proc/slabinfo
  19 /sys/devices/system/cpu
  20 /sys/devices/system/cpu/online
  21 ```
  22
  23 are container aware such that the values displayed (e.g. in `/proc/uptime`)
  24 really reflect how long the container is running and not how long the host is
  25 running.
  26
  27 Prior to the implementation of cgroup namespaces by Serge Hallyn `LXCFS` also
  28 provided a container aware `cgroupfs` tree. It took care that the container
  29 only had access to cgroups underneath it's own cgroups and thus provided
  30 additional safety. For systems without support for cgroup namespaces `LXCFS`
  31 will still provide this feature but it is mostly considered deprecated.
  32
  33 ## Upgrading `LXCFS` without restart
  34
  35 `LXCFS` is split into a shared library (a libtool module, to be precise)
  36 `liblxcfs` and a simple binary `lxcfs`. When upgrading to a newer version of
  37 `LXCFS` the `lxcfs` binary will not be restarted. Instead it will detect that
  38 a new version of the shared library is available and will reload it using
  39 `dlclose(3)` and `dlopen(3)`. This design was chosen so that the fuse main loop
  40 that `LXCFS` uses will not need to be restarted. If it were then all containers
  41 using `LXCFS` would need to be restarted since they would otherwise be left
  42 with broken fuse mounts.
  43
  44 To force a reload of the shared library at the next possible instance simply
  45 send `SIGUSR1` to the pid of the running `LXCFS` process. This can be as simple
  46 as doing:
  47
  48     rm /usr/lib64/lxcfs/liblxcfs.so # MUST to delete the old library file first
  49     cp liblxcfs.so /usr/lib64/lxcfs/liblxcfs.so # to place new library file
  50     kill -s USR1 $(pidof lxcfs) # reload
  51
  52 ### musl
  53
  54 To achieve smooth upgrades through shared library reloads `LXCFS` also relies
  55 on the fact that when `dlclose(3)` drops the last reference to the shared
  56 library destructors are run and when `dlopen(3)` is called constructors are
  57 run. While this is true for `glibc` it is not true for `musl` (See the section
  58 [Unloading libraries](https://wiki.musl-libc.org/functional-differences-from-glibc.html).).
  59 So users of `LXCFS` on `musl` are advised to restart `LXCFS` completely and all
  60 containers making use of it.
  61
  62 ## Building
  63
  64 In order to build LXCFS install fuse and the fuse development headers according
  65 to your distro. LXCFS prefers `fuse3` but does work with new enough `fuse2`
  66 versions:
  67
  68     git clone git://github.com/lxc/lxcfs
  69     cd lxcfs
  70     meson setup -Dinit-script=systemd --prefix=/usr build/
  71     meson compile -C build/
  72     sudo meson install -C build/
  73
  74 ## Usage
  75 The recommended command to run lxcfs is:
  76
  77     sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/lxcfs
  78     sudo lxcfs /var/lib/lxcfs
  79
  80 A container runtime wishing to use `LXCFS` should then bind mount the
  81 approriate files into the correct places on container startup.
  82
  83 ### LXC
  84 In order to use lxcfs with systemd-based containers, you can either use
  85 LXC 1.1 in which case it should work automatically, or otherwise, copy
  86 the `lxc.mount.hook` and `lxc.reboot.hook` files (once built) from this tree to
  87 `/usr/share/lxcfs`, make sure it is executable, then add the
  88 following lines to your container configuration:
  89 ```
  90 lxc.mount.auto = cgroup:mixed
  91 lxc.autodev = 1
  92 lxc.kmsg = 0
  93 lxc.include = /usr/share/lxc/config/common.conf.d/00-lxcfs.conf
  94 ```
  95
  96 ## Using with Docker
  97
  98 ```
  99 docker run -it -m 256m --memory-swap 256m \
 100       -v /var/lib/lxcfs/proc/cpuinfo:/proc/cpuinfo:rw \
 101       -v /var/lib/lxcfs/proc/diskstats:/proc/diskstats:rw \
 102       -v /var/lib/lxcfs/proc/meminfo:/proc/meminfo:rw \
 103       -v /var/lib/lxcfs/proc/stat:/proc/stat:rw \
 104       -v /var/lib/lxcfs/proc/swaps:/proc/swaps:rw \
 105       -v /var/lib/lxcfs/proc/uptime:/proc/uptime:rw \
 106       -v /var/lib/lxcfs/proc/slabinfo:/proc/slabinfo:rw \
 107       -v /var/lib/lxcfs/sys/devices/system/cpu:/sys/devices/system/cpu:rw \
 108       ubuntu:18.04 /bin/bash
 109  ```
 110
 111  In a system with swap enabled, the parameter "-u" can be used to set all values in "meminfo" that refer to the swap to 0.
 112
 113  sudo lxcfs -u /var/lib/lxcfs
 114
 115 ## Swap handling
 116 If you noticed LXCFS not showing any SWAP in your container despite
 117 having SWAP on your system, please read this section carefully and look
 118 for instructions on how to enable SWAP accounting for your distribution.
 119
 120 Swap cgroup handling on Linux is very confusing and there just isn't a
 121 perfect way for LXCFS to handle it.
 122
 123 Terminology used below:
 124  - RAM refers to `memory.usage_in_bytes` and `memory.limit_in_bytes`
 125  - RAM+SWAP refers to `memory.memsw.usage_in_bytes` and `memory.memsw.limit_in_bytes`
 126
 127 The main issues are:
 128  - SWAP accounting is often opt-in and, requiring a special kernel boot
 129    time option (`swapaccount=1`) and/or special kernel build options
 130    (`CONFIG_MEMCG_SWAP`).
 131
 132  - Both a RAM limit and a RAM+SWAP limit can be set. The delta however
 133    isn't the available SWAP space as the kernel is still free to SWAP as
 134    much of the RAM as it feels like. This makes it impossible to render
 135    a SWAP device size as using the delta between RAM and RAM+SWAP for that
 136    wouldn't account for the kernel swapping more pages, leading to swap
 137    usage exceeding swap total.
 138
 139  - It's impossible to disable SWAP in a given container. The closest
 140    that can be done is setting swappiness down to 0 which severly limits
 141    the risk of swapping pages but doesn't eliminate it.
 142
 143 As a result, LXCFS had to make some compromise which go as follow:
 144  - When SWAP accounting isn't enabled, no SWAP space is reported at all.
 145    This is simply because there is no way to know the SWAP consumption.
 146    The container may very much be using some SWAP though, there's just
 147    no way to know how much of it and showing a SWAP device would require
 148    some kind of SWAP usage to be reported. Showing the host value would be
 149    completely wrong, showing a 0 value would be equallty wrong.
 150
 151  - Because SWAP usage for a given container can exceed the delta between
 152    RAM and RAM+SWAP, the SWAP size is always reported to be the smaller of
 153    the RAM+SWAP limit or the host SWAP device itself. This ensures that at no
 154    point SWAP usage will be allowed to exceed the SWAP size.
 155
 156  - If the swappiness is set to 0 and there is no SWAP usage, no SWAP is reported.
 157    However if there is SWAP usage, then a SWAP device of the size of the
 158    usage (100% full) is reported. This provides adequate reporting of
 159    the memory consumption while preventing applications from assuming more
 160    SWAP is available.