Incus 0.1 released - Will Proxmox adopt this?

P

pschneider1968

Member
Nov 2, 2022
37
18
13
Bavaria, Germany
linktr.ee
Hi there team Proxmox,

this isn't something that is related to installation or configuration, but I didn't find any better place to post this question.

The fork of LXD, the Incus Project, has announced its initial release 0.1 after the fork. Reports are here:
https://lwn.net/Articles/947136/
https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/10/incus_01_lxd_fork/
https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/incus-0-1-has-been-released/18036

I wonder whether this is something that we might be seing in Proxmox VE any time soon? Is Proxmox looking into options for doing an overhaul of its container support?

To be clear: I don't feel this might be necessary right now, because I am super happy with Proxmox VE as it is now. It just works. I'm running half a dozen LXC containers with it, and even more VMs. But I was wondering which kind of technical improvements might be ahead of us in the (near) future.

I would be grateful I someone from the Proxmox team could share some thoughts or insights on this!

Thanks, Peter
 
It isn;t exactly about the code for LXD..., it' also about the image libraries that used to be available through Publc Canonical...
From a gentoo News item:

2023-12-28-lxd-to-lose-access-for-its-image-server
Title LXD to lose access for its image server
Author Joonas Niilola <juippis@gentoo.org>
Posted 2023-12-28
Revision 1

Earlier this year Canonical took their LXD project away from the
community-run LinuxContainers and brought it under their own
administration.
While doing so, they removed management access from non-Canonical
employees, along with other things. This caused LXD to be forked and so
Incus was born. Incus would pull updates from upstream LXD to stay
compatible.

Recently LXD was re-licensed so Incus can't benefit from its code
anymore. Therefore Incus will become a truly independent project.

However it is LinuxContainers community that still hosts most LXD
images for free, for Incus and LXD. With them unable to benefit or use
LXD anymore, LinuxContainers have decided to stop building and hosting
LXD images. Realistically they can't support LXD given these
restrictions.

They will start limiting access immediately in 2024 for non-LTS users
which is LXD >=5.18, or "unstable" in Gentoo. LTS LXD, or "stable"
(5.0) in Gentoo will be allowed to pull images until May (an estimate),
or until Incus LTS will be released. Times are subject to change.

What can you do?
================

1: Switch to Incus.
2: Deploy your own image server.
3: Wait and see what Canonical does.

For unstable users the matter is rather critical, while stable users
have the luxury of waiting. Note that a downgrade from unstable to
stable is not possible due to database schemas.

Please follow or take a look at Gentoo bug #920527 with more
information about this situation, and updates e.g. for timetables.

Bug: https://bugs.gentoo.org/920527
Click to expand...

So how about adding the Incus image library as an additional/optional source?
 
scarpentier said:
Just expressing my support for Incus as well. I want proxmox to be aligned with what's used by the community and it seems clear to me that Incus is the way to go.
Click to expand...

PVE has never used LXD (the project which has effectively been forked now as Incus), but LXC (yes, this is confusing naming ;)). LXC was and is a project under the linuxcontainers.org umbrella, nothing has changed for us.
 
IMHO There are two aspects here.....
Incus code Libraries -- -LXd related, non relevant
Incus image repository -- Container images to be run..... replaces the repository formerly available from Ubuntu....
 
As some would already be aware, Truenas just replaced their custom LXC and libvirt QEMU support with Incus using the Incus API. I just tried it out and already at this early stage it is about the best web UI for Incus. If Proxmox could also switch to Incus, then Incus would become the LXC/QEMU CT/VM industry standard.
 
PVE does exactly the same job as LXD and incus (and more), it doesn't make sense to make PVE manage Incus, as you'd end up with two layers of management instead of one..
 
  • Like
Reactions: Johannes S and spirit
I really like PVE as a front-end to LXC. So, I agree that switching to Incus doesn't make much sense.

I occasionally run into features in LXC configuration files that aren't easily usable from PVE, and I occasionally encounter "lxc" commands that I am missing in PVE. So, taking inspiration from Incus never hurts. But that's very different from switching to Incus, which really doesn't make much sense exactly for the reasons you mentioned.

I do wish though that PVE gained the ability to natively manage OCI images just the same as how Incus can do that. There are all sorts of ways that I can run Docker on PVE. But having OCI images natively managed by the UI would be so much nicer.
 
zodiac said:
So, taking inspiration from Incus never hurts. But that's very different from switching to Incus, which really doesn't make much sense exactly for the reasons you mentioned.
Click to expand...

Even then you can always run incus in a vm if you prefer it for lxcs.
zodiac said:
I do wish though that PVE gained the ability to natively manage OCI images just the same as how Incus can do that. There are all sorts of ways that I can run Docker on PVE. But having OCI images natively managed by the UI would be so much nicer.
Click to expand...

This was already discussed in the past and is quite unlikely to happen:


A

Thread 'Docker support in Proxmox'

Does anyone interested to realize docker support in Proxmox?

Incus OCI support is also still limited compared to docker/portainer, podman et all ( see
https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/incus-6-3-has-been-released/21019 and https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/getting-started-with-incus-oci-containers/23284 ) so the main usecase is if you don't want to setup a whole vm just for one service.
Anything more in ProxmoxVE will need quite some development resources with limited benefit since at the end of the day you will still want to have one or more dedicated vm/s with a full blown oci runtime if you have more than a hand full of oci containers.

Please note that this is just my personal opinion I have no idea what Proxmox staff might planning :)

But at the moment my impression is that they priorize different things, e.g. the datacenter manager
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom