How to create a new CT / LXC container template ?

S

shodan

Active Member
Sep 1, 2022
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Hi,

I wish to create an easily deployable, fully offline template service in proxmox.

I reviewed docker but I keep finding people having issues with using docker in CT containers.

And running docker in a VM feels wasteful.

Also I don't like the cloud-centric feel of docker in general, I want a single file, which contains my thing.

Let's say for the sake of example, that my thing is going to be a ready to go Zoneminder server, a common open source surveillance camera software.

So, I think what I would like is start with a debian 12.7 CT container, then install Zoneminder properly on it, leaving only the actual hardware configuration to be done.

Then run something like sysprep on windows, to wipe all encryption keys and unique trackers, I don't know how to do that on linux ? cloudinit ? Is that it ?

Then somehow package that as a CT template file like proxmox has

and finally, post that to some CT container repository ? Does such a thing even exist ? Should I check if someone in the world already made a Zoneminde CT container perhaps ?

Although, I suspect no such thing as a CT container repository exist,

I have asked this on the linuxcontainers forum and got the following answer.

You are not supposed to put applications in CT containers, they are system containers, so no Zoneminder or mailserver containers make sense and it doesn't make sense to have a repository

https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/where-can-i-find-the-biggest-lxc-container-repository/14946

exact quote

"
LXC and LXD are meant to be used with system-containers, not application containers.
system-containers are to be treated like VMs, they just work differently under the hood.

That means you can simply launch a container using your favorite OS(e.g. Ubuntu) and install all the software that you want using the usual methods
"

So their perspective is "just install linux and do the whole she-bang by hand.

Which honestly sounds very dumb to me and like the people who make LXC container system don't understand what it is for ?!

Anyways....


Re-reading that thread I see that one year after I asked that, someone posted a link to "proxmox helper scripts"

https://tteck.github.io/Proxmox/

Code: 
All Templates LXC
A script designed to allow for the creation of one of the many free LXC templates. Great for creating system LXCs.
The script creates a *.creds file in the Proxmox root directory with the password of the newly created LXC.
Please take note that if you plan to use this script for creating TurnKey LXCs, you'll need to modify the hostname after creation.
To create a new Proxmox VE Template LXC, run the command below in the Proxmox VE Shell.
bash -c "$(wget -qLO - https://github.com/tteck/Proxmox/raw/main/misc/all-templates.sh)"

Well that is promising !

Publishing "LXD" images ? (does that work on proxmox ?)
https://ubuntu.com/blog/publishing-lxd-images

list of lxc container images (can I use these AS IS in my proxmox server ?)
https://images.linuxcontainers.org/


And then I would like to make, one click deployable desktop (debian/ubuntu/mint/nixos/gentoo and probably others) CT containers with GPU support (novnc+virgl+passthrough) but that looks like another big can of worms
 
a container template is just the rootfs as tarball. you probably want to remove instance-specific information (things like users, home dirs, ssh host keys, machine-id, ..)

the lxc project has their own tool to generate such barebones tarballs called distrobuilder: https://github.com/lxc/distrobuilder
we have our own for Debian and Arch based distros: https://git.proxmox.com/?p=dab.git;a=summary / https://git.proxmox.com/?p=aab.git;a=summary

but you can also use something like debootstrap/mmdebstrap or the equivalent for other distros ;)

shodan said:
list of lxc container images (can I use these AS IS in my proxmox server ?)
https://images.linuxcontainers.org/
Click to expand...

for the most part, yes. some of them might require manual fixups
 
I've come to the conclusion that it is easier to script the building of the LXC container from scratch
Rather than take a running system and make it deployable.

This is mostly because, you need to make the script no matter to what to build the first one.
Then you still need the script for updates
and lastly, there does not seem to be a universal way to do something akin to "sysprep" on window, that is to clean the distribution of all running files, keys, identifiers and other forensic. Trying to do that is more work than creating the build script.

I have been making such script, like I have just release a LXC build script for Vaultwarden

N

Post in thread 'A proxmox install script for Vaultwarden'

Yeah,scripts works okay, nevermind the date. It pulls from dani ,and builds .deb files. But yeah , you would need to install nginx as a reverse proxy.

and a few weeks ago I made one for openwrt as a VPN client

K

Thread 'How to download LXC version of OpenWRT and run it on Proxmox'

Hi,

I am looking to run an OpenWRT container to provide network access to my VMs.

I have seen on https://us.images.linuxcontainers.org/ that there is a template built for OpenWRT 19.07.
When I run pveam available, the containers at the URL above are not listed but other ones are listed instead.

Looking at https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2044, this seem to have been requested already.
I have just updated the bug informing about the availability of a pre-built template from https://us.images.linuxcontainers.org/images/openwrt/.

Is there any chance to...

And I have one for Stable Diffusion Automatic1111 WebUI , but it was the first one and not as nice as the later ones

S

Thread 'Setting up nvidia gpu for stable diffusion in a LXC container ?'

Hi,

I'm trying to get stable-diffusion to work in an LXC container, but not succeeding yet !

Here's what I've tried


added this to /etc/apt/sources.list

Code: 
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

Ran apt update and then

Code: 
apt install nvidia-driver nvidia-kernel-dkms

rebooted and nvidia driver is loaded

Code: 
root@proxmox:~# lsmod | grep nv
nvidia_uvm           1609728  0
nvidia_drm             81920  0
nvidia_modeset       1314816...
 
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