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PVE({manvolnum})
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NAME
----

pct - Tool to manage Linux Containers (LXC) on Proxmox VE


SYNOPSIS
--------

include::pct.1-synopsis.adoc[]

DESCRIPTION
-----------
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Proxmox Container Toolkit
=========================
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:title: Linux Container
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Containers are a lightweight alternative to fully virtualized
VMs. Instead of emulating a complete Operating System (OS), containers
simply use the OS of the host they run on. This implies that all
containers use the same kernel, and that they can access resources
from the host directly.

This is great because containers do not waste CPU power nor memory due
to kernel emulation. Container run-time costs are close to zero and
usually negligible. But there are also some drawbacks you need to
consider:

* You can only run Linux based OS inside containers, i.e. it is not
  possible to run FreeBSD or MS Windows inside.

* For security reasons, access to host resources needs to be
  restricted. This is done with AppArmor, SecComp filters and other
  kernel features. Be prepared that some syscalls are not allowed
  inside containers.

{pve} uses https://linuxcontainers.org/[LXC] as underlying container
technology. We consider LXC as low-level library, which provides
countless options. It would be too difficult to use those tools
directly. Instead, we provide a small wrapper called `pct`, the
"Proxmox Container Toolkit".

The toolkit is tightly coupled with {pve}. That means that it is aware
of the cluster setup, and it can use the same network and storage
resources as fully virtualized VMs. You can even use the {pve}
firewall, or manage containers using the HA framework.

Our primary goal is to offer an environment as one would get from a
VM, but without the additional overhead. We call this "System
Containers".

NOTE: If you want to run micro-containers (with docker, rkt, ...), it
is best to run them inside a VM.


Security Considerations
-----------------------

Containers use the same kernel as the host, so there is a big attack
surface for malicious users. You should consider this fact if you
provide containers to totally untrusted people. In general, fully
virtualized VMs provide better isolation.

The good news is that LXC uses many kernel security features like
AppArmor, CGroups and PID and user namespaces, which makes containers
usage quite secure. We distinguish two types of containers:


Privileged Containers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Security is done by dropping capabilities, using mandatory access
control (AppArmor), SecComp filters and namespaces. The LXC team
considers this kind of container as unsafe, and they will not consider
new container escape exploits to be security issues worthy of a CVE
and quick fix. So you should use this kind of containers only inside a
trusted environment, or when no untrusted task is running as root in
the container.


Unprivileged Containers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This kind of containers use a new kernel feature called user
namespaces. The root UID 0 inside the container is mapped to an
unprivileged user outside the container. This means that most security
issues (container escape, resource abuse, ...) in those containers
will affect a random unprivileged user, and so would be a generic
kernel security bug rather than an LXC issue. The LXC team thinks
unprivileged containers are safe by design.


Configuration
-------------

The `/etc/pve/lxc/<CTID>.conf` file stores container configuration,
where `<CTID>` is the numeric ID of the given container. Like all
other files stored inside `/etc/pve/`, they get automatically
replicated to all other cluster nodes.

NOTE: CTIDs < 100 are reserved for internal purposes, and CTIDs need to be
unique cluster wide.

.Example Container Configuration
----
ostype: debian
arch: amd64
hostname: www
memory: 512
swap: 512
net0: bridge=vmbr0,hwaddr=66:64:66:64:64:36,ip=dhcp,name=eth0,type=veth
rootfs: local:107/vm-107-disk-1.raw,size=7G
----

Those configuration files are simple text files, and you can edit them
using a normal text editor (`vi`, `nano`, ...). This is sometimes
useful to do small corrections, but keep in mind that you need to
restart the container to apply such changes.

For that reason, it is usually better to use the `pct` command to
generate and modify those files, or do the whole thing using the GUI.
Our toolkit is smart enough to instantaneously apply most changes to
running containers. This feature is called "hot plug", and there is no
need to restart the container in that case.


File Format
~~~~~~~~~~~

Container configuration files use a simple colon separated key/value
format. Each line has the following format:

-----
# this is a comment
OPTION: value
-----

Blank lines in those files are ignored, and lines starting with a `#`
character are treated as comments and are also ignored.

It is possible to add low-level, LXC style configuration directly, for
example:

 lxc.init_cmd: /sbin/my_own_init

or

 lxc.init_cmd = /sbin/my_own_init

Those settings are directly passed to the LXC low-level tools.


Snapshots
~~~~~~~~~

When you create a snapshot, `pct` stores the configuration at snapshot
time into a separate snapshot section within the same configuration
file. For example, after creating a snapshot called ``testsnapshot'',
your configuration file will look like this:

.Container configuration with snapshot
----
memory: 512
swap: 512
parent: testsnaphot
...

[testsnaphot]
memory: 512
swap: 512
snaptime: 1457170803
...
----

There are a few snapshot related properties like `parent` and
`snaptime`. The `parent` property is used to store the parent/child
relationship between snapshots. `snaptime` is the snapshot creation
time stamp (Unix epoch).


Guest Operating System Configuration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We normally try to detect the operating system type inside the
container, and then modify some files inside the container to make
them work as expected. Here is a short list of things we do at
container startup:

set /etc/hostname:: to set the container name

modify /etc/hosts:: to allow lookup of the local hostname

network setup:: pass the complete network setup to the container

configure DNS:: pass information about DNS servers

adapt the init system:: for example, fix the number of spawned getty processes

set the root password:: when creating a new container

rewrite ssh_host_keys:: so that each container has unique keys

randomize crontab:: so that cron does not start at the same time on all containers

Changes made by {PVE} are enclosed by comment markers:

----
# --- BEGIN PVE ---
<data>
# --- END PVE ---
----

Those markers will be inserted at a reasonable location in the
file. If such a section already exists, it will be updated in place
and will not be moved.

Modification of a file can be prevented by adding a `.pve-ignore.`
file for it.  For instance, if the file `/etc/.pve-ignore.hosts`
exists then the `/etc/hosts` file will not be touched. This can be a
simple empty file creatd via:

 # touch /etc/.pve-ignore.hosts

Most modifications are OS dependent, so they differ between different
distributions and versions. You can completely disable modifications
by manually setting the `ostype` to `unmanaged`.

OS type detection is done by testing for certain files inside the
container:

Ubuntu:: inspect /etc/lsb-release (`DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu`)

Debian:: test /etc/debian_version

Fedora:: test /etc/fedora-release

RedHat or CentOS:: test /etc/redhat-release

ArchLinux:: test /etc/arch-release

Alpine:: test /etc/alpine-release

Gentoo:: test /etc/gentoo-release

NOTE: Container start fails if the configured `ostype` differs from the auto
detected type.


Options
~~~~~~~

include::pct.conf.5-opts.adoc[]


Container Images
----------------

Container images, sometimes also referred to as ``templates'' or
``appliances'', are `tar` archives which contain everything to run a
container. You can think of it as a tidy container backup. Like most
modern container toolkits, `pct` uses those images when you create a
new container, for example:

 pct create 999 local:vztmpl/debian-8.0-standard_8.0-1_amd64.tar.gz

{pve} itself ships a set of basic templates for most common
operating systems, and you can download them using the `pveam` (short
for {pve} Appliance Manager) command line utility. You can also
download https://www.turnkeylinux.org/[TurnKey Linux] containers using
that tool (or the graphical user interface).

Our image repositories contain a list of available images, and there
is a cron job run each day to download that list. You can trigger that
update manually with:

 pveam update

After that you can view the list of available images using:

 pveam available

You can restrict this large list by specifying the `section` you are
interested in, for example basic `system` images:

.List available system images
----
# pveam available --section system
system          archlinux-base_2015-24-29-1_x86_64.tar.gz
system          centos-7-default_20160205_amd64.tar.xz
system          debian-6.0-standard_6.0-7_amd64.tar.gz
system          debian-7.0-standard_7.0-3_amd64.tar.gz
system          debian-8.0-standard_8.0-1_amd64.tar.gz
system          ubuntu-12.04-standard_12.04-1_amd64.tar.gz
system          ubuntu-14.04-standard_14.04-1_amd64.tar.gz
system          ubuntu-15.04-standard_15.04-1_amd64.tar.gz
system          ubuntu-15.10-standard_15.10-1_amd64.tar.gz
----

Before you can use such a template, you need to download them into one
of your storages. You can simply use storage `local` for that
purpose. For clustered installations, it is preferred to use a shared
storage so that all nodes can access those images.

 pveam download local debian-8.0-standard_8.0-1_amd64.tar.gz

You are now ready to create containers using that image, and you can
list all downloaded images on storage `local` with:

----
# pveam list local
local:vztmpl/debian-8.0-standard_8.0-1_amd64.tar.gz  190.20MB
----

The above command shows you the full {pve} volume identifiers. They include
the storage name, and most other {pve} commands can use them. For
example you can delete that image later with:

 pveam remove local:vztmpl/debian-8.0-standard_8.0-1_amd64.tar.gz


Container Storage
-----------------

Traditional containers use a very simple storage model, only allowing
a single mount point, the root file system. This was further
restricted to specific file system types like `ext4` and `nfs`.
Additional mounts are often done by user provided scripts. This turned
out to be complex and error prone, so we try to avoid that now.

Our new LXC based container model is more flexible regarding
storage. First, you can have more than a single mount point. This
allows you to choose a suitable storage for each application. For
example, you can use a relatively slow (and thus cheap) storage for
the container root file system. Then you can use a second mount point
to mount a very fast, distributed storage for your database
application.

The second big improvement is that you can use any storage type
supported by the {pve} storage library. That means that you can store
your containers on local `lvmthin` or `zfs`, shared `iSCSI` storage,
or even on distributed storage systems like `ceph`. It also enables us
to use advanced storage features like snapshots and clones. `vzdump`
can also use the snapshot feature to provide consistent container
backups.

Last but not least, you can also mount local devices directly, or
mount local directories using bind mounts. That way you can access
local storage inside containers with zero overhead. Such bind mounts
also provide an easy way to share data between different containers.


Mount Points
~~~~~~~~~~~~

The root mount point is configured with the `rootfs` property, and you can
configure up to 10 additional mount points. The corresponding options
are called `mp0` to `mp9`, and they can contain the following setting:

include::pct-mountpoint-opts.adoc[]

Currently there are basically three types of mount points: storage backed
mount points, bind mounts and device mounts.

.Typical container `rootfs` configuration
----
rootfs: thin1:base-100-disk-1,size=8G
----


Storage Backed Mount Points
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Storage backed mount points are managed by the {pve} storage subsystem and come
in three different flavors:

- Image based: these are raw images containing a single ext4 formatted file
  system.
- ZFS subvolumes: these are technically bind mounts, but with managed storage,
  and thus allow resizing and snapshotting.
- Directories: passing `size=0` triggers a special case where instead of a raw
  image a directory is created.


Bind Mount Points
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Bind mounts allow you to access arbitrary directories from your Proxmox VE host
inside a container. Some potential use cases are:

- Accessing your home directory in the guest
- Accessing an USB device directory in the guest
- Accessing an NFS mount from the host in the guest

Bind mounts are considered to not be managed by the storage subsystem, so you
cannot make snapshots or deal with quotas from inside the container. With
unprivileged containers you might run into permission problems caused by the
user mapping and cannot use ACLs.

NOTE: The contents of bind mount points are not backed up when using `vzdump`.

WARNING: For security reasons, bind mounts should only be established
using source directories especially reserved for this purpose, e.g., a
directory hierarchy under `/mnt/bindmounts`. Never bind mount system
directories like `/`, `/var` or `/etc` into a container - this poses a
great security risk.

NOTE: The bind mount source path must not contain any symlinks.

For example, to make the directory `/mnt/bindmounts/shared` accessible in the
container with ID `100` under the path `/shared`, use a configuration line like
`mp0: /mnt/bindmounts/shared,mp=/shared` in `/etc/pve/lxc/100.conf`.
Alternatively, use `pct set 100 -mp0 /mnt/bindmounts/shared,mp=/shared` to
achieve the same result.


Device Mount Points
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Device mount points allow to mount block devices of the host directly into the
container. Similar to bind mounts, device mounts are not managed by {PVE}'s
storage subsystem, but the `quota` and `acl` options will be honored.

NOTE: Device mount points should only be used under special circumstances. In
most cases a storage backed mount point offers the same performance and a lot
more features.

NOTE: The contents of device mount points are not backed up when using `vzdump`.


FUSE Mounts
~~~~~~~~~~~

WARNING: Because of existing issues in the Linux kernel's freezer
subsystem the usage of FUSE mounts inside a container is strongly
advised against, as containers need to be frozen for suspend or
snapshot mode backups.

If FUSE mounts cannot be replaced by other mounting mechanisms or storage
technologies, it is possible to establish the FUSE mount on the Proxmox host
and use a bind mount point to make it accessible inside the container.


Using Quotas Inside Containers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Quotas allow to set limits inside a container for the amount of disk
space that each user can use.  This only works on ext4 image based
storage types and currently does not work with unprivileged
containers.

Activating the `quota` option causes the following mount options to be
used for a mount point:
`usrjquota=aquota.user,grpjquota=aquota.group,jqfmt=vfsv0`

This allows quotas to be used like you would on any other system. You
can initialize the `/aquota.user` and `/aquota.group` files by running

----
quotacheck -cmug /
quotaon /
----

and edit the quotas via the `edquota` command. Refer to the documentation
of the distribution running inside the container for details.

NOTE: You need to run the above commands for every mount point by passing
the mount point's path instead of just `/`.


Using ACLs Inside Containers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The standard Posix **A**ccess **C**ontrol **L**ists are also available inside containers.
ACLs allow you to set more detailed file ownership than the traditional user/
group/others model.


Container Network
-----------------

You can configure up to 10 network interfaces for a single
container. The corresponding options are called `net0` to `net9`, and
they can contain the following setting:

include::pct-network-opts.adoc[]


Backup and Restore
------------------


Container Backup
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is possible to use the `vzdump` tool for container backup. Please
refer to the `vzdump` manual page for details.


Restoring Container Backups
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Restoring container backups made with `vzdump` is possible using the
`pct restore` command. By default, `pct restore` will attempt to restore as much
of the backed up container configuration as possible. It is possible to override
the backed up configuration by manually setting container options on the command
line (see the `pct` manual page for details).

NOTE: `pvesm extractconfig` can be used to view the backed up configuration
contained in a vzdump archive.

There are two basic restore modes, only differing by their handling of mount
points:


``Simple'' Restore Mode
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If neither the `rootfs` parameter nor any of the optional `mpX` parameters
are explicitly set, the mount point configuration from the backed up
configuration file is restored using the following steps:

. Extract mount points and their options from backup
. Create volumes for storage backed mount points (on storage provided with the
`storage` parameter, or default local storage if unset)
. Extract files from backup archive
. Add bind and device mount points to restored configuration (limited to root user)

NOTE: Since bind and device mount points are never backed up, no files are
restored in the last step, but only the configuration options. The assumption
is that such mount points are either backed up with another mechanism (e.g.,
NFS space that is bind mounted into many containers), or not intended to be
backed up at all.

This simple mode is also used by the container restore operations in the web
interface.


``Advanced'' Restore Mode
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

By setting the `rootfs` parameter (and optionally, any combination of `mpX`
parameters), the `pct restore` command is automatically switched into an
advanced mode. This advanced mode completely ignores the `rootfs` and `mpX`
configuration options contained in the backup archive, and instead only
uses the options explicitly provided as parameters.

This mode allows flexible configuration of mount point settings at restore time,
for example:

* Set target storages, volume sizes and other options for each mount point
individually
* Redistribute backed up files according to new mount point scheme
* Restore to device and/or bind mount points (limited to root user)


Managing Containers with `pct`
------------------------------

`pct` is the tool to manage Linux Containers on {pve}. You can create
and destroy containers, and control execution (start, stop, migrate,
...). You can use pct to set parameters in the associated config file,
like network configuration or memory limits.


CLI Usage Examples
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Create a container based on a Debian template (provided you have
already downloaded the template via the web interface)

 pct create 100 /var/lib/vz/template/cache/debian-8.0-standard_8.0-1_amd64.tar.gz

Start container 100

 pct start 100

Start a login session via getty

 pct console 100

Enter the LXC namespace and run a shell as root user

 pct enter 100

Display the configuration

 pct config 100

Add a network interface called `eth0`, bridged to the host bridge `vmbr0`,
set the address and gateway, while it's running

 pct set 100 -net0 name=eth0,bridge=vmbr0,ip=192.168.15.147/24,gw=192.168.15.1

Reduce the memory of the container to 512MB

 pct set 100 -memory 512


Obtaining Debugging Logs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In case `pct start` is unable to start a specific container, it might be
helpful to collect debugging output by running `lxc-start` (replace `ID` with
the container's ID):

 lxc-start -n ID -F -l DEBUG -o /tmp/lxc-ID.log

This command will attempt to start the container in foreground mode, to stop the container run `pct shutdown ID` or `pct stop ID` in a second terminal.

The collected debug log is written to `/tmp/lxc-ID.log`.

NOTE: If you have changed the container's configuration since the last start
attempt with `pct start`, you need to run `pct start` at least once to also
update the configuration used by `lxc-start`.


Files
------

`/etc/pve/lxc/<CTID>.conf`::

Configuration file for the container '<CTID>'.


Container Advantages
--------------------

* Simple, and fully integrated into {pve}. Setup looks similar to a normal
  VM setup. 

** Storage (ZFS, LVM, NFS, Ceph, ...)

** Network

** Authentication

** Cluster

* Fast: minimal overhead, as fast as bare metal

* High density (perfect for idle workloads)

* REST API

* Direct hardware access


Technology Overview
-------------------

* Integrated into {pve} graphical user interface (GUI)

* LXC (https://linuxcontainers.org/)

* lxcfs to provide containerized /proc file system

* AppArmor

* CRIU: for live migration (planned)

* We use latest available kernels (4.4.X)

* Image based deployment (templates)

* Container setup from host (network, DNS, storage, ...)


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