LXD¶

LXD is a next generation system container and virtual machine manager. It offers a unified user experience around full Linux systems running inside containers or virtual machines.

It’s image based with pre-made images available for a wide number of Linux distributions and is built around a very powerful, yet pretty simple, REST API.

To get a better idea of what LXD is and what it does, you can try it online! Then if you want to run it locally, take a look at our getting started guide.

Release announcements can be found here: https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/news/

And the release tarballs here: https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/downloads/

The documentation is here: https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/docs/master/

Status¶

Type	Service	Status
CI (client)	GitHub
CI (server)	Jenkins
Go documentation	Godoc
Static analysis	GoReport
Translations	Weblate
Project status	CII Best Practices

Security¶

LXD, similar to other container and VM managers provides a UNIX socket for local communication.

WARNING: Anyone with access to that socket can fully control LXD, which includes the ability to attach host devices and filesystems, this should therefore only be given to users who would be trusted with root access to the host.

When listening on the network, the same API is available on a TLS socket (HTTPS), specific access on the remote API can be restricted through Canonical RBAC.

More details are available here.

Bug reports¶

Bug reports and Feature requests can be filed at: https://github.com/lxc/lxd/issues/new

Contributing¶

Fixes and new features are greatly appreciated but please read our contributing guidelines first.

Support and discussions¶

Forum¶

A discussion forum is available at: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org

Mailing-lists¶

We use the LXC mailing-lists for developer and user discussions, you can find and subscribe to those at: https://lists.linuxcontainers.org

IRC¶

If you prefer live discussions, you can find us in #lxc on irc.libera.chat.

Hacking on LXD¶

Directly using the REST API¶

The LXD REST API can be used locally via unauthenticated Unix socket or remotely via SSL encapsulated TCP.

Via Unix socket¶

curl --unix-socket /var/lib/lxd/unix.socket \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -X POST \
    -d @hello-ubuntu.json \
    lxd/1.0/containers

or for snap users:

curl --unix-socket /var/snap/lxd/common/lxd/unix.socket \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -X POST \
    -d @hello-ubuntu.json \
    lxd/1.0/containers

Via TCP¶

TCP requires some additional configuration and is not enabled by default.

lxc config set core.https_address "[::]:8443"

curl -k -L \
    --cert ~/.config/lxc/client.crt \
    --key ~/.config/lxc/client.key \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -X POST \
    -d @hello-ubuntu.json \
    "https://127.0.0.1:8443/1.0/containers"

JSON payload¶

The hello-ubuntu.json file referenced above could contain something like:

{
    "name":"some-ubuntu",
    "ephemeral":true,
    "config":{
        "limits.cpu":"2"
    },
    "source": {
        "type":"image",
        "mode":"pull",
        "protocol":"simplestreams",
        "server":"https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases",
        "alias":"18.04"
    }
}