LXC - DISTROBUILDER

I've always wished for something like a Dockerfile, but for LXC containers. Recently, I discovered distrobuilder, a tool that allows you to effortlessly create LXC containers using a YAML configuration. With this in mind, I've wrapped it into an Ansible playbook and set up GitHub Actions to provide semi-automated LXC container provisioning!

🔨 TODO

• Packages
• Actions (Scripts)
• Files
• Actions - Package
• Actions - File
• Variants
• Releases

Table of Contents

• Requirements
• Quick start
• Playbook
• Makefile stages
• Repository structure
• Versioning model
• Proxmox
• Refs

🧰 Requirements

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Make sure you have installed both - latest docker and gnu make!

• Docker - https://docs.docker.com/desktop/install/
• Make - https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/

⚡️ Quick start

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1. Clone repository
2. execute make prepare
3. execute make exec

After successfully running the exec stage, your LXC package will appear in the /ansible directory - rootfs.tar.xz.

📔 Playbook

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Main Playbook

#!/usr/bin/env ansible-playbook
#---
- name: playbook 
  hosts: localhost 

  roles:
    - role: distrobuilder

      # Additional packages 
      packages:
      - curl
      - vim-tiny
      
      # Additional scripts 
      actions:
      - | 
        #!/bin/sh
        # Install docker engine
        set -eux
        curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
      - |
        #!/bin/sh
        # ...
...

Defaults

---
defaults:
  distribution:     "debian"
  release_name:     "bookworm"
  # used during generation of archive-key
  # https://ftp-master.debian.org/keys.html
  release_version:  "12"
  architecture:     "amd64"
  variant:          "minbase"
  downloader:       "debootstrap"
  source_url:       "https://deb.debian.org/debian/"
  description:      "base image"

  # Default packages
  packages:
    - apt-utils
    - ca-certificates
    - dialog
    - dnsutils
    - ifupdown
    - iproute2
    - iputils-ping
    - isc-dhcp-client
    - locales
    - net-tools
    - netbase
    - openssh-client
    - rsync
    - sysv-rc-conf
    - sysvinit-core

📒 Make stages

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Stages definied in makefile.

• make prepare - Execute ansible-playbook,
• make execute - Execute distrobuilder,
• make show - Show running containers,
• make prune - Prune project related containers,

🗄 Repository structure

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• ./ansible ansible related resources, workdir for compose-containers,
• ./build each step contains its own docker container,
• ./Makefile entrypoint.

🔖 Versioning model

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Versions have the format <MAJOR>.<MINOR>(.<PATCH>)? where:

• <MAJOR> Triggered manualy from default branch,
• <MINOR> Triggered automaticly after each push from default branch,
• <PATCH> Triggered automaticly after each push from fix/[0-9].[0-9].x branch.

💻 Proxmox

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Here's a brief showcase demonstrating how we can populate our built artifact into Proxmox PVE!

📌 Refs

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• https://linuxcontainers.org/distrobuilder/docs/latest/reference/source/
• https://blog.simos.info/using-distrobuilder-to-create-container-images-for-lxc-and-lxd/
• https://github.com/lxc/lxc-ci/blob/main/images/debian.yaml