unable to restore an privileged CT as unprivileged 2026

[RobFantini]

there is another thread named 'unable to restore an unprivileged CT as unprivileged' ( https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/unable-to-restore-an-unprivileged-ct-as-unprivileged.80004/ ) .

so I have a privileged container I want to convert to unprivileged.

tried these:

# pct restore 181 /media/pbs-nfs/dump/vzdump-lxc-102-2026_06_20-17_00_09.tar.zst -ignore-unpack-errors 1 -unprivileged --storage nvme-4tb
recovering backed-up configuration from '/media/pbs-nfs/dump/vzdump-lxc-102-2026_06_20-17_00_09.tar.zst'
/dev/rbd1
Creating filesystem with 4194304 4k blocks and 1048576 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 3b2ffc96-0718-4b9c-9c86-507eb6eb7fba
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
restoring '/media/pbs-nfs/dump/vzdump-lxc-102-2026_06_20-17_00_09.tar.zst' now..
extracting archive '/media/pbs-nfs/dump/vzdump-lxc-102-2026_06_20-17_00_09.tar.zst'
Total bytes read: 9804339200 (9.2GiB, 271MiB/s)
merging backed-up and given configuration..

and

:# pct restore 182  /media/pbs-nfs/dump/vzdump-lxc-102-2026_06_20-17_00_09.tar.zst  --unprivileged  1 --storage nvme-4tb
recovering backed-up configuration from '/media/pbs-nfs/dump/vzdump-lxc-102-2026_06_20-17_00_09.tar.zst'
/dev/rbd1
Creating filesystem with 4194304 4k blocks and 1048576 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 80b9b482-db2f-4dcf-8602-541aeec6b846
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
restoring '/media/pbs-nfs/dump/vzdump-lxc-102-2026_06_20-17_00_09.tar.zst' now..
extracting archive '/media/pbs-nfs/dump/vzdump-lxc-102-2026_06_20-17_00_09.tar.zst'
Total bytes read: 9804339200 (9.2GiB, 308MiB/s)
merging backed-up and given configuration..

in both cases the .conf file showed unprivileged

:# cat /etc/pve/lxc/182.conf
arch: amd64
cores: 2
features: nesting=1
hostname: squid-deb-proxy
memory: 4096
mp0: /mnt/fbc,mp=/mnt/fbc
nameserver: 10.1.3.41
net0: name=eth0,bridge=vmbr3,firewall=1,hwaddr=BC:24:11:1D:1D:44,ip=dhcp,tag=3,type=veth
ostype: ubuntu
rootfs: nvme-4tb:vm-182-disk-0,size=16G
searchdomain: test.com
swap: 512
unprivileged: 1

for us this is not an urgent issue to be fixed. If anyone has a suggestion to try reply and I'll test.

 

[j.theisen]

Hi @RobFantini

thanks for posting on the forum!

I currently don't see an issue in these restores. Could you please elaborate on what your expected behavior would be or what errors you see?

Yours sincerely
Jonas

 

[RobFantini]

I see , had thread name wrong. Just fixed that

unable to restore an privileged CT as unprivileged is the issue

 

[j.theisen]

Ah i see, thanks for clearing that up!

Still i don't see the issue then.
unprivileged 1 means the container is unprivileged.
A privileged container would have no unprivileged directive at all in its config file.

So what is the config you would expect?

 

[RobFantini]

you are correct . I was trying to convert an unprivileged to privileged . I had mis read the instruction at the wiki page https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Unprivileged_LXC_containers . it mentions '
It is possible to convert an existing CT into an unprivileged CT by doing a backup, then a restore on console'

So there were no errors above.

Question - is it possible to convert an unprivileged ct to privileged?

 

[j.theisen]

To my knowledge this should work the same way as the other way around, so backing up the unprivileged container and restoring it as privileged.
For reference i still shall link the documentation on privileged containers [1], since they should only be used in trusted environments.

[1] https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Linux_Container#:~:text=Privileged Containers