Incus Method

Info

While this method still works for LXD, the author prefers Incus instead. The reason is that from a development standpoint, Incus appears to be out in front of LXD, and that includes the images available. With Incus, as of September 2025, there are images for Rocky Linux 10, and other RHEL rebuild 10 images. LXD images only include 9 builds currently. This may be due to the licensing change announced by Linux Containers project lead, Stéphane Graber, back in December 2023.

In addition, this procedure still works with the current versioning of documentation. If a document is created or edited on any of the version branches (main, rocky-9, and rocky-8), the document synced to the container will show the correct content. This means that you can continue to use this procedure as is. Included are some addtional notes important to versioning.

Tip

If you are using Rocky Linux 10 as your workstation, you need to keep in mind that as of the rewriting of this document, lsyncd is not available from the EPEL. You will need to use the install from source method.

Introduction¶

There are several ways to run a copy of mkdocs to see exactly how your Rocky Linux document will appear when merged on the live system. This particular document deals with using an incus container on your local workstation to separate python code in mkdocs from other projects you might be working on.

The recommendation is to keep projects separate to avoid causing problems with your workstation's code.

Prerequisites and assumptions¶

Familiarity and comfort with the command-line
Comfortable using tools for editing, SSH, and synchronization, or willing to follow along and learn
Incus reference - there is a long document on building and using incus on a server here, but you will use just a basic install on our Linux workstation
Using lsyncd for mirroring files. See documentation on that here
You will need public keys generated for your user and the "root" user on your local workstation using this document
Our bridge interface is running on 10.56.233.1 and our container is running on 10.56.233.189 in our examples. However your IPs for the bridge and container will be different.
"youruser" in this document represents your user id
The assumption is that you are already doing documentation development with a clone of the documentation repository on your workstation

The `mkdocs` container¶

Create the container¶

Our first step is to create the incus container. Using your container's defaults (bridge interface) is perfectly fine here.

You will add a Rocky container to our workstation for mkdocs. Just name it "mkdocs":

incus launch images:rockylinux/10 mkdocs

The container needs to be a proxy. By default, when mkdocs serve starts, it runs on 127.0.0.1:8000. That is fine when it is on your local workstation without a container. However, when it is in an incus container on your local workstation, you need to set up the container with a proxy port. Do this with:

incus config device add mkdocs mkdocsport proxy listen=tcp:0.0.0.0:8000 connect=tcp:127.0.0.1:8000

In the line above, "mkdocs" is our container name, "mkdocsport" is an arbitrary name you are giving to the proxy port, the type is "proxy", and you are listening on all TCP interfaces on port 8000 and connecting to the localhost for that container on port 8000.

Note

If you are running an incus instance on another machine in your network, remember to make sure that port 8000 is open in the firewall.

Installing packages¶

First, get into the container with:

incus shell mkdocs bash

For Rocky Linux 10 you will need a few packages:

dnf install git openssh-server python3-pip rsync

When installed, you need to enable and start sshd:

systemctl enable --now sshd

Container users¶

You need to set a password for our root user and then add our user (the user you use on your local machine) to the sudoers list. You are the "root" user at the moment. To change the password enter:

passwd

Set a secure and memorable password.

Next, add your user and set a password:

adduser youruser
passwd youruser

Add your user to the sudoers group:

usermod -aG wheel youruser

You should be able to SSH into the container with the root user or your user from your workstation and enter a password. Ensure that you can do that before continuing.

SSH for root and your user¶

In this procedure, the root user (at minimum) needs to be able to SSH into the container without entering a password. This is because of the lsyncd process you will be implementing. The assumption here is that you can sudo to the root user on your local workstation:

sudo -s

The assumption also is that the root user has an id_rsa.pub key in the ./ssh directory. If not, generate one with this procedure:

ls -al .ssh/
drwx------  2 root root 4096 Feb 25 08:06 .
drwx------ 14 root root 4096 Feb 25 08:10 ..
-rw-------  1 root root 2610 Feb 14  2021 id_rsa
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  572 Feb 14  2021 id_rsa.pub
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  222 Feb 25 08:06 known_hosts

To get SSH access on our container without having to enter a password, provided the id_rsa.pub key exists, just run:

ssh-copy-id root@10.56.233.189

For your user, however, you need the entire .ssh/ directory copied to your container. You will keep everything the same for this user so that your access to GitHub over SSH is the same.

To copy everything over to your container, you just need to do this as your user, not sudo:

scp -r .ssh/ youruser@10.56.233.189:/home/youruser/

Next, SSH into the container as your user:

ssh -l youruser 10.56.233.189

You need to ensure things are identical. You will do this with ssh-add. You must also ensure that you have the ssh-agent available:

eval "$(ssh-agent)"
ssh-add

Cloning repositories¶

You need two repositories cloned, but no need to add any git remotes. The documentation repository here will only display the current documentation (mirrored from your workstation) and the docs.

The rockylinux.org repository is for running mkdocs serve and will use the mirror as its source. Run all these steps as your non-root user. If you are not able to clone the repositories as your userid, then there IS a problem with your identity as far as git is concerned and you will need to review the last few steps for re-creating your key environment (above).

First, clone the documentation:

git clone git@github.com:rocky-linux/documentation.git

Next, clone docs.rockylinux.org:

git clone git@github.com:rocky-linux/docs.rockylinux.org.git

If you get errors, return to the earlier steps and ensure that those are all correct before continuing.

Setting up `mkdocs`¶

Installing the needed plugins is all done with pip3 and the "requirements.txt" file in the docs.rockylinux.org directory. While this process will argue with you about using the root user to write the changes to the system directories, you have to run it as root.

You do this with sudo here.

Change into the directory:

cd docs.rockylinux.org

Then run:

sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Next you must set up mkdocs with an additional directory. mkdocs requires the creation of a docs directory and then the documentation/docs directory linked beneath it. Do this with:

mkdir docs
cd docs
ln -s ../../documentation/docs

Testing `mkdocs`¶

Now that you have mkdocs setup, try starting the server. Remember, this process will argue that it looks like this is production. It is not, so ignore the warning. Start mkdocs serve with:

mkdocs serve -a 0.0.0.0:8000

You will see this or similar in the console:

INFO     -  Building documentation...
WARNING  -  Config value: 'dev_addr'. Warning: The use of the IP address '0.0.0.0' suggests a production environment or the use of a
            proxy to connect to the MkDocs server. However, the MkDocs' server is intended for local development purposes only. Please
            use a third party production-ready server instead.
INFO     -  Adding 'sv' to the 'plugins.search.lang' option
INFO     -  Adding 'it' to the 'plugins.search.lang' option
INFO     -  Adding 'es' to the 'plugins.search.lang' option
INFO     -  Adding 'ja' to the 'plugins.search.lang' option
INFO     -  Adding 'fr' to the 'plugins.search.lang' option
INFO     -  Adding 'pt' to the 'plugins.search.lang' option
WARNING  -  Language 'zh' is not supported by lunr.js, not setting it in the 'plugins.search.lang' option
INFO     -  Adding 'de' to the 'plugins.search.lang' option
INFO     -  Building en documentation
INFO     -  Building de documentation
INFO     -  Building fr documentation
INFO     -  Building es documentation
INFO     -  Building it documentation
INFO     -  Building ja documentation
INFO     -  Building zh documentation
INFO     -  Building sv documentation
INFO     -  Building pt documentation
INFO     -  [14:12:56] Reloading browsers

If you have done everything correctly, you should be able to open a web browser and go to the IP of your container on port :8000, and see the documentation site.

In our example, enter the following in the browser address (NOTE To avoid broken URLs, the IP here is "your-server-ip". You just need to substitute in the IP):

http://your-server-ip:8000

`lsyncd`¶

You are almost there if you saw the documentation in the web browser. The last step is to keep the documentation in your container synchronized with the one on your local workstation.

As noted, you are doing this here with lsyncd.

Installation of lsyncd differs depending on your Linux version. This document covers ways to install it on Rocky Linux with an RPM from the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux), and from source. If you are using other Linux types (Ubuntu for example), they generally have their own packages, but with nuances.

Ubuntu's, for example, names the configuration file differently. Just be aware that if you are using another Linux workstation type other than Rocky Linux, and do not want to install from source, there are probably packages available for your platform.

For now, we are assuming that you are using a Rocky Linux workstation and are using the RPM install method from the included document.

Note

As of this writing, lsyncd is not available from the EPEL for Rocky Linux 10. You will need to use the source install method if that is your workstation version.

Configuration¶

Note

The root user must run the daemon, so you must be root to create the configuration files and logs. For this we are assuming sudo -s.

You need to have some logs available for lsyncd to write to:

touch /var/log/lsyncd-status.log
touch /var/log/lsyncd.log

You also need to have an exclude file created, even though in this case you are not excluding anything:

touch /etc/lsyncd.exclude

Finally you need to create the configuration file. In this example, we are using vi as our editor, but use the editor you feel comfortable with:

vi /etc/lsyncd.conf

Then place this content in that file and save it. Be sure to replace "youruser" with your actual user, and the IP address with your own container IP:

settings {
   logfile = "/var/log/lsyncd.log",
   statusFile = "/var/log/lsyncd-status.log",
   statusInterval = 20,
   maxProcesses = 1
   }

sync {
   default.rsyncssh,
   source="/home/youruser/documentation",
   host="root@10.56.233.189",
   excludeFrom="/etc/lsyncd.exclude",
   targetdir="/home/youruser/documentation",
   rsync = {
     archive = true,
     compress = false,
     whole_file = false
   },
   ssh = {
     port = 22
   }
}

Assuming that you enabled lsyncd when you installed it, at this point you need just to start or restart the process:

systemctl restart lsyncd

To ensure things are working, check the logs-particularly the lsyncd.log, which should show content similar to this if everything started correctly:

Fri Feb 25 08:10:16 2022 Normal: --- Startup, daemonizing ---
Fri Feb 25 08:10:16 2022 Normal: recursive startup rsync: /home/youruser/documentation/ -> root@10.56.233.189:/home/youruser/documentation/
Fri Feb 25 08:10:41 2022 Normal: Startup of "/home/youruser/documentation/" finished: 0
Fri Feb 25 08:15:14 2022 Normal: Calling rsync with filter-list of new/modified files/dirs

Versioning notes¶

You need a clone of the documentation repository from Rocky Linux documentation repository. That part is important, because if you have instead cloned your own fork of the repository, then your ability to git checkout the rocky-8 and rocky-9 branches will not be there. Only the main branch will be available.

GitHub workstation setup¶

These steps are not for your container, but for your workstation's copy of the documentation:

Clone the Rocky Linux documentation repository:

git clone git@github.com:rocky-linux/documentation.git

The git remote name will be "upstream", rather than "origin." Check the remote name with:

git remote -v

Immediately after cloning, this shows:

origin git@github.com:rocky-linux/documentation.git (fetch)
origin git@github.com:rocky-linux/documentation.git (push)

Rename the remote with:

git remote rename origin upstream

Run git remote -v again and you will see:

upstream git@github.com:rocky-linux/documentation.git (fetch)
upstream git@github.com:rocky-linux/documentation.git (push)

Add your fork as a remote with the "origin" name. Substitute your actual GitHub username:

git remote add origin git@github.com:[your-github-user-name]/documentation.git

Run git remote -v again and you will see:

origin git@github.com:[your-github-user-name]/documentation.git (fetch)
origin git@github.com:[your-github-user-name]/documentation.git (push)
upstream git@github.com:rocky-linux/documentation.git (fetch)
upstream git@github.com:rocky-linux/documentation.git (push)

You need to populate your fork with the version branches (other than main). The main branch currently holds version 10 information. You want to populate your fork with the rocky-8 and rocky-9 branches so that you are ready to edit documents in those older versions. The first step is to git checkout these branch names:
```
git checkout rocky-8
```
The first time you do this, your will see:
```
branch 'rocky-8' set up to track 'upstream/rocky-8'.
Switched to a new branch 'rocky-8'
```
Next, push the branch to your fork:
```
git push origin rocky-8
```
This acts like it is creating a new pull request, but when you check your fork branch contents, you will see rocky-8 is now one of the branches.

Repeat these steps with the rocky-9 branch.

How this applies to this procedure¶

With the branches created, if you want to edit the README.md for only rocky-9, you need to create a new branch based on the rocky-9 version branch:

git checkout -b fixes_for_rocky9_readme rocky-9

Then edit the document normally. As you save your work, your container documents will update, and running mkdocs serve as described in this document, will show that content.

Once finished and changes pushed to your fork to create a pull request, you can checkout the main branch again. Since all of your work was within the checked out rocky-9 branch, your synced documentation in your container reverts to what it was before starting the process. In this way, you can always track your work regardless of what version you are working with. Your container will remain in sync with your local workstation content.

Conclusion¶

You can work on your workstation documentation while seeing changes appear in your synced copy in your container. The recommended practice is that all Python must run separately from any other Python code you might be developing. Using incus containers makes that easier.

Author: Steven Spencer

Contributors: Ezequiel Bruni, Ganna Zhyrnova

Incus Method

Introduction¶

Prerequisites and assumptions¶

The mkdocs container¶

Create the container¶

Installing packages¶

Container users¶

SSH for root and your user¶

Cloning repositories¶

Setting up mkdocs¶

Testing mkdocs¶

lsyncd¶

Configuration¶

Versioning notes¶

GitHub workstation setup¶

How this applies to this procedure¶

Conclusion¶

The `mkdocs` container¶

Setting up `mkdocs`¶

Testing `mkdocs`¶

`lsyncd`¶