The software described in this documentation is either in Extended Support or Sustaining Support. See https://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/enterprise-linux-support-policies-069172.pdf for more information.
Oracle recommends that you upgrade the software described by this documentation as soon as possible.

8.2.3 Creating and Starting a Container

Note

The procedure in this section uses the LXC template script for Oracle Linux (lxc-oracle), which is located in /usr/share/lxc/templates.

An Oracle Linux container requires a minimum of 400 MB of disk space.

To create and start a container:

  1. Create an Oracle Linux 6 container named ol6ctr1 using the lxc-oracle template script. 

    [root@host ~]# lxc-create -n ol6ctr1 -B btrfs -t oracle -- --release=6.latest

lxc-create: No config file specified, using the default config /etc/lxc/default.conf
Host is OracleServer 6.4
Create configuration file /container/ol6ctr1/config
Downloading release 6.latest for x86_64
  .
  .
  .
  yum-metadata-parser.x86_64 0:1.1.2-16.el6                                     
  zlib.x86_64 0:1.2.3-29.el6                                                    

Complete!

    Note

    For LXC version 1.0 and later, you must specify the -B btrfs option if you want to use the snapshot features of btrfs. For more information, see the lxc-create(1) manual page.

    The lxc-create command runs the template script lxc-oracle to create the container in /container/ol6ctr1 with the btrfs subvolume /container/ol6ctr1/rootfs as its root file system. The command then uses yum to install the latest available update of Oracle Linux 6 from the Oracle Linux Yum Server. It also writes the container's configuration settings to the file /container/ol6ctr1/config and its fstab file to /container/ol6ctr1/fstab. The default log file for the container is /container/ol6ctr1/ol6ctr1.log.

    You can specify the following template options after the -- option to lxc-create:

    -a | --arch=i386|x86_64

    Specifies the architecture. The default value is the architecture of the host.

    --baseurl=pkg_repo

    Specifies the file URI of a package repository. You must also use the --arch and --release options to specify the architecture and the release, for example: 

    # mount -o loop OracleLinux-R7-GA-Everything-x86_64-dvd.iso /mnt
# lxc-create -n ol70beta -B btrfs -t oracle -- -R 7.0 -a x86_64 \
  --baseurl=file:///mnt/Server
    -P | --patch=path

    Patches the rootfs at the specified path.

    --privileged[=rt]

    Allows you to adjust the values of certain kernel parameters under the /proc hierarchy.

    The container uses a privilege configuration file, which mounts /proc read-only with some exceptions. See Section 8.9, “Configuring Kernel Parameter Settings for Oracle Linux Containers”.

    This option also enables the CAP_SYS_NICE capability, which allows you to set negative nice values (that is, more favored for scheduling) for processes from within the container.

    If you specify the =rt (real-time) modifier, you can configure the lxc.cgroup.cpu.rt_runtime_us setting in the container's configuration file or when you start the container. This setting specifies the maximum continuous period in microseconds for which the container has access to CPU resources from the base period set by the system-wide value of cpu.rt_period_us. Otherwise, a container uses the system-wide value of cpu.rt_runtime_us, which might cause it to consume too many CPU resources. In addition, this modifier ensures that rebooting a container terminates all of its processes and boots it to a clean state.

    -R | --release=major.minor

    Specifies the major release number and minor update number of the Oracle release to install. The value of major can be set to 4, 5, 6, or 7. If you specify latest for minor, the latest available release packages for the major release are installed. If the host is running Oracle Linux, the default release is the same as the release installed on the host. Otherwise, the default release is the latest update of Oracle Linux 6.

    -r | --rpms=rpm_name

    Installs the specified RPM in the container.

    -t | --templatefs=rootfs

    Specifies the path to the root file system of an existing system, container, or Oracle VM template that you want to copy. Do not specify this option with any other template option. See Section 8.4, “Creating Additional Containers”.

    -u | --url=repo_URL

    Specifies a yum repository other than Oracle Public Yum. For example, you might want to perform the installation from a local yum server. The repository file in configured in /etc/yum.repos.d in the container's root file system. The default URL is https://yum.oracle.com.

  2. If you want to create additional copies of the container in its initial state, create a snapshot of the container's root file system, for example: 

    # btrfs subvolume snapshot /container/ol6ctr1/rootfs /container/ol6ctr1/rootfs_snap

    See Section 8.4, “Creating Additional Containers”.

  3. Start the container ol6ctr1 as a daemon that writes its diagnostic output to a log file other than the default log file. 

    [root@host ~]# lxc-start -n ol6ctr1 -d -o /container/ol6ctr1_debug.log -l DEBUG

    Note

    If you omit the -d option, the container's console opens in the current shell.

    The following logging levels are available: FATAL, CRIT, WARN, ERROR, NOTICE, INFO, and DEBUG. You can set a logging level for all lxc-* commands.

    If you run the ps -ef --forest command on the host system and the process tree below the lxc-start process shows that the /usr/sbin/sshd and /sbin/mingetty processes have started in the container, you can log in to the container from the host. See Section 8.3, “Logging in to Containers”.

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