vpsAdminOS
vpsAdminOS is a small OS serving as a host for unprivileged Linux system containers. It is based on not-os and NixOS. It is designed to run full distributions inside unprivileged containers which look and feel as much as a virtual machine as possible.
vpsAdminOS is developed and used in production by vpsFree.cz, a non-profit organization which provides virtual servers to its members. See vpsfree-cz-configuration for example cluster configuration.
Links
- IRC: #vpsadminos @ irc.libera.chat
- Documentation: https://vpsadminos.org/
- Man pages: https://man.vpsadminos.org/
- OS and program references: https://ref.vpsadminos.org/
- ISO images: https://iso.vpsadminos.org/
Components
vpsAdminOS uses:
- LTS kernel with a mix of out-of-tree patches to improve container experience,
- runit as an init system,
- ZFS for storage,
- our own tools for system container management called osctl,
- LXC is used to run the containers,
- AppArmor for additional security,
- BIRD for network routing.
Building OS
Our kernel live-patch facility requires ccache to build the OS.
git clone https://github.com/vpsfreecz/vpsadminos/
cd vpsadminosvpsAdminOS is developed on top of the latest NixOS release, so make sure that
the correct version of nixpkgs is in NIX_PATH, or set it as follows:
git clone https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs --branch nixos-22.11
export NIX_PATH=`pwd`vpsAdminOS can now be built and run:
# Build the OS
make
# Run under qemu
make qemu
The QEMU runner creates two disk images - sda.img and sdb.img which are added
as QEMU ATA drives and can be used to create a mirrored ZFS pool that persists
across reboots.
Usage
# Login via ssh or use qemu terminal with autologin
ssh -p 2222 localhost
# Configure osctld:
osctl pool install tank
# Create a container:
osctl ct new --distribution alpine myct01
# Configure container networking:
# Bridged veth
osctl ct netif new bridge --link lxcbr0 myct01 eth0
# Routed veth
osctl ct netif new routed myct01 eth1
osctl ct netif ip add myct01 eth1 1.2.3.4/32
# Start the container:
osctl ct start myct01
# Work with containers:
osctl ct ls
osctl ct attach myct01
osctl ct console myct01
osctl ct exec myct01 ip addr
# More information:
man osctl
# https://vpsadminos.org/user-guide/setup/
# https://vpsadminos.org/containers/administration/Converting OpenVZ Legacy containers into vpsAdminOS
vpsAdminOS Converter can be used to convert OpenVZ Legacy containers containers into vpsAdminOS. See the documentation.
Nested containers
vpsAdminOS supports nested containers, e.g. LXC/LXD or Docker.
Nesting LXC/LXD containers can be enabled per container using:
osctl ct set nesting <id>
Docker works out-of-the-box with several known issues.