Running/LXC

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Revision 23 as of 2011-06-22 06:40:59

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This page explains how to set up and run Launchpad (for development) inside a LXC.

Why?

Launchpad development setup makes significant changes to your machine; its nice to be unaffected by those except when you are actually doing such development.

Also, launchpad has some limitations on concurrent testing per-machine and so forth - multiple container's can be used to work around this.

Make a LXC

  1. Install lxc

sudo apt-get install lxc
  1. Work around 800456

sudo apt-get install cgroup-bin
  1. Work around 784093

sudo dd of=/etc/cgconfig.conf << EOF
mount {
 cpu = /sys/fs//cgroup/cpu;
 cpuacct = /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu;
 devices = /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu;
 memory = /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu;
}
EOF
sudo service cgconfig restart
  1. Work around 798476 (optional if you run i386 or have a -tonne- of memory and don't care about 64-bit footprint.

    • Grab the patch from the bug and apply it to /usr/lib/lxc/templates/lxc-lucid. If you're running i386 already or want a 64-bit lxc then do not pass arch= on the lxc-create command line.
  2. Create a config for your containers

sudo dd of=/etc/lxc/local.conf << EOF
lxc.network.type=veth
lxc.network.link=virbr0
lxc.network.flags=up
EOF
  1. Create a container

sudo arch=i386 lxc-create -n lucid-test-lp -t lucid -f /etc/lxc/local.conf

sudo arch=i386 http_proxy=http://host:port/ lxc-create -n lucid-test-lp -t lucid -f /etc/lxc/local.conf
  1. Start it

sudo lxc-start -n lucid-test-lp
  1. To stop it log in and run 'poweroff -n'.
  2. The new container won't have your proxy / mirror settings preserved. Customise it at this point before going further if you care about this.
  3. Grab your user id and username so you can setup a bind mount outside the container:

id -u
id -nu
  1. Inside the container add the user:

adduser --uid $id $username
  1. below this is not yet updated from the vm instructions
  2. After its installed, connect to the image and install acpid and openssh-server

  3. Use ssh-copy-id to copy your public key into the VM.
  4. ssh -A <vm IP address> to connect to the VM.

  5. bzr whoami "Your Name <your.email@example.com>" to set your bzr identity in the VM.

  6. You can now follow the getting-started on LP instructions.

References

See also this email thread about running Launchpad in a virtual machine, and this discussion of the differences between running in a chroot environment and running a VM. Running/RemoteAccess has a discussion for how you can configure the VM to allow the host machine to access the web pages, etc.

Alternatively

You can skip some manual steps of installing from an ISO using a command like this:

sudo ubuntu-vm-builder  kvm lucid --domain vm --dest ~/vm/lp-dev \
 --hostname lp-dev \
 --mem 2048 --cpus 2 \
 --components main,universe,multiverse,restricted \
 --mirror http://10.113.3.35:3142/mirror.internode.on.net/pub/ubuntu/ubuntu \
 --libvirt qemu:///system \
 --debug -v \
 --ssh-user-key ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub --ssh-key ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub \
 --rootsize 24000 \
 --user $USER

After installation completes, it should show up in your virt-manager menu.

In LXC

It seems like it would be nice to run Launchpad in LXC containers: they should be more efficient than a VM (especially with regard to memory and disk) but more isolated than a chroot. More testing or documentation is needed.