Chapter 6: Profiles¶
Throughout this chapter you will need to execute commands as your unprivileged user ("lxdadmin" if you've been following from the beginning in this book).
You get a default profile when you install LXD, and this profile cannot be removed or modified. That said, you can use the default profile to create new profiles to use with your containers.
If you look at our container listing, you will notice that the IP address in each case is assigned from the bridged interface. In a production environment, you may want to use something else. This might be a DHCP assigned address from your LAN interface or even a statically assigned address from your WAN.
If you configure your LXD server with two interfaces and assign each an IP on your WAN and LAN, then it is possible to assign your containers IP addresses based on which interface the container needs to be facing.
As of version 9.0 of Rocky Linux (and really any bug for bug copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) the method for assigning IP addresses statically or dynamically using the profiles below, is broken out of the gate.
There are ways to get around this, but it is annoying. This appears to have something to do with changes that have been made to Network Manager that affect macvlan. macvlan allows you to create multiple interfaces with different Layer 2 addresses.
For now, just be aware that what we are going to suggest next has drawbacks when choosing container images based on RHEL.
Creating A macvlan Profile And Assigning It¶
To create our macvlan profile, simply use this command:
lxc profile create macvlan
Keep in mind that if we were on a multi-interface machine and wanted more than one macvlan template based on which network we wanted to reach, we could use "lanmacvlan" or "wanmacvlan" or any other name that we wanted to use to identify the profile. In other words, using "macvlan" in our profile create statement is totally up to you.
Now we want to modify the macvlan interface, but before we do, we need to know what the parent interface is for our LXD server. This will be the interface that has a LAN (in this case) assigned IP. To determine which interface that is, use:
ip addr
And then look for the interface with the LAN IP assignment in the 192.168.1.0/24 network:
2: enp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 40:16:7e:a9:94:85 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.1.106/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute enp3s0
valid_lft 4040sec preferred_lft 4040sec
inet6 fe80::a308:acfb:fcb3:878f/64 scope link noprefixroute
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
So, in this case, the interface would be "enp3s0".
Now let's modify the profile:
lxc profile device add macvlan eth0 nic nictype=macvlan parent=enp3s0
This command adds all of the necessary parameters to the macvlan profile so that it can be used.
To take a look at what this command created, use the command:
lxc profile show macvlan
Which will give you output similar to this:
config: {}
description: ""
devices:
eth0:
nictype: macvlan
parent: enp3s0
type: nic
name: macvlan
used_by: []
Obviously, you can use profiles for lots of other things, but assigning a static IP to a container, or using your own DHCP server as a source for an address are very common needs.
To assign the macvlan profile to rockylinux-test-8 we need to do the following:
lxc profile assign rockylinux-test-8 default,macvlan
Let's also do the same thing for rockylinux-test-9:
lxc profile assign rockylinux-test-9 default,macvlan
This simply says, we want the default profile, and then we want to apply the macvlan profile as well.
Rocky Linux macvlan¶
The upstream has been playing with the Network Manager implementation to the point of frustration. Early on with Rocky Linux 8, the macvlan profile was broken. With Rocky Linux 8.6, the macvlan profile worked again, and then with 9.0, it was once again broken. Technically, macvlan is part of the kernel, and the profile does assign correctly in 9.0, but an IP address from the LAN interface network is never assigned. There are work arounds to fix this, but none is very pretty-particularly if you are wanting to assign a static IP address.
Keep in mind that none of this has anything to do with Rocky Linux particularly, but with the upstream package implementation.
Simply put, if you want to run Rocky Linux containers and use macvlan to assign an IP address from your LAN or WAN networks, then the process is different based on which container version of the OS you are using (8.6 or 9.0).
Rocky Linux 9.0 macvlan - The DHCP Fix¶
First, let's illustrate what happens when we stop and restart the two containers after assigning the macvlan profile.
Having the profile assigned, however, doesn't change the default configuration, which is set to DHCP by default.
To test this, simply do the following:
lxc restart rocky-test-8
lxc restart rocky-test-9
Now list your containers again and note that the rockylinux-test-9 does not have an IP address anymore:
lxc list
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| NAME | STATE | IPV4 | IPV6 | TYPE | SNAPSHOTS |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| rockylinux-test-8 | RUNNING | 192.168.1.114 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| rockylinux-test-9 | RUNNING | | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| ubuntu-test | RUNNING | 10.146.84.181 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
To further demonstrate the problem here, we need to execute dhclient on the Rocky Linux 9.0 container. This will show us that the macvlan profile, is in fact applied:
lxc exec rockylinux-test-9 dhclient
A new listing using lxc list now shows the following:
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| NAME | STATE | IPV4 | IPV6 | TYPE | SNAPSHOTS |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| rockylinux-test-8 | RUNNING | 192.168.1.114 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| rockylinux-test-9 | RUNNING | 192.168.1.113 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| ubuntu-test | RUNNING | 10.146.84.181 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
That should have happened with a simple stop and start of the container, but it does not. Assuming that we want to use a DHCP assigned IP address every time, then we can fix this with a simple crontab entry. To do this, we need to gain shell access to the container by entering:
lxc exec rockylinux-test-9 bash
Next, lets determine the complete path to dhclient. To do this, because this was built on a minimal image, you will need to first install which:
dnf install which
then run:
which dhclient
which should return:
/usr/sbin/dhclient
Next, let's modify root's crontab:
crontab -e
And add this line:
@reboot /usr/sbin/dhclient
The crontab command entered above, uses vi so to save your changes and exit simply use:
SHIFT:wq!
Now exit the container and restart rockylinux-test-9:
lxc restart rockylinux-test-9
A new listing will reveal that the container has been assigned the DHCP address:
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| NAME | STATE | IPV4 | IPV6 | TYPE | SNAPSHOTS |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| rockylinux-test-8 | RUNNING | 192.168.1.114 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| rockylinux-test-9 | RUNNING | 192.168.1.113 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| ubuntu-test | RUNNING | 10.146.84.181 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
Rocky Linux 9.0 macvlan - The Static IP Fix¶
To statically assign an IP address, things get even more convoluted. Since network-scripts is now deprecated in Rocky Linux 9.0, the only way to do this is through static assignment, and because of the way the containers use the network, you're not going to be able to set the route with a normal ip route statement either. The problem turns out to be that the interface assigned when applying the macvlan profile (eth0 in this case), cannot be managed. The fix is to rename the network interface on the container after restart and then assign the static IP. This can all be scripted and can be done (again) with root's crontab. This is all done with the ip command.
To do this, we need to gain shell access to the container again:
lxc exec rockylinux-test-9 bash
Next, we are going to create a bash script in /usr/local/sbin called "static":
vi /usr/local/sbin/static
The contents of this script are simple:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
/usr/sbin/ip link set dev eth0 name net0
/usr/sbin/ip addr add 192.168.1.151/24 dev net0
/usr/sbin/ip link set dev net0 up
/usr/sbin/ip route add default via 192.168.1.1
So, what are we doing here? First, we rename eth0 to a new name that we can manage. We have chosen "net0" here. Second, we assign the new static IP that we have allocated for our container. In this case 192.168.1.151. Now we bring up the new "net0" interface. Finally, we need to add the default route for our interface.
Make our script executable with:
chmod +x /usr/local/sbin/static
Next, we add this to root's crontab for the container using the @reboot time:
@reboot /usr/local/sbin/static
Finally, exit the container and restart it:
lxc restart rockylinux-test-9
Wait a few seconds and then list out the containers again:
lxc list
Which should show you success:
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| NAME | STATE | IPV4 | IPV6 | TYPE | SNAPSHOTS |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| rockylinux-test-8 | RUNNING | 192.168.1.114 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| rockylinux-test-9 | RUNNING | 192.168.1.151 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| ubuntu-test | RUNNING | 10.146.84.181 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
Ubuntu macvlan¶
Luckily, In Ubuntu's implementation of Network Manager, the macvlan stack is NOT broken, so it is much easier to deploy!
First, just like with our rockylinux-test-9 container, we need to assign the template to our container:
lxc profile assign ubuntu-test default,macvlan
That should be all that is necessary to get a DHCP assigned address. To find out, stop and then start the container again:
lxc restart ubuntu-test
Then list the containers again:
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| NAME | STATE | IPV4 | IPV6 | TYPE | SNAPSHOTS |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| rockylinux-test-8 | RUNNING | 192.168.1.114 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| rockylinux-test-9 | RUNNING | 192.168.1.151 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| ubuntu-test | RUNNING | 192.168.1.132 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
Success!
Configuring the Static IP is just a little different, but not at all hard. We need to modify the .yaml file associated with the container's connection (/10-lxc.yaml). For this static IP, we will use 192.168.1.201:
vi /etc/netplan/10-lxc.yaml
And change what is there to the following:
network:
version: 2
ethernets:
eth0:
dhcp4: false
addresses: [192.168.1.201/24]
gateway4: 192.168.1.1
nameservers:
addresses: [8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4]
Save your changes (SHFT:wq!) and exit the container.
Now restart the container:
lxc restart ubuntu-test
When you list your containers again, you should see our new static IP:
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| NAME | STATE | IPV4 | IPV6 | TYPE | SNAPSHOTS |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| rockylinux-test-8 | RUNNING | 192.168.1.114 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| rockylinux-test-9 | RUNNING | 192.168.1.151 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| ubuntu-test | RUNNING | 192.168.1.201 (eth0) | | CONTAINER | 0 |
+-------------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
Success!
In the examples used in this chapter, we have intentionally chosen a hard container to configure, and two easy ones. There are obviously many more versions of Linux available in the image listing. If you have a favorite, try installing it, assigning the macvlan template, and setting IP's.
Author: Steven Spencer
Contributors: Ezequiel Bruni