lxc_container

lxc_container

Creates and bootstraps a LXC container on a Proxmox VE node to a point where the containers root account can be accessed via SSH.

This role has been tested on the following container templates:

• Ubuntu 20.04
• Debian 10
• Fedora 32
• CentOS 7/8
• OpenSUSE 15.2
• Alpine 3.12

Other distributions should work as well, as long as they:

• use a package manager also used by one of the above distros
• use systemd for service management (or rc for Alpine)

The main use for this role is to create an Ansible-compatible container image for consumption by the lxc_container_to_ostemplate role that you can then deploy with Ansible directly. If you are looking for a more general solution to deploy LXC containers, I recommend looking into the community.general.proxmox module (that also powers this role) or, for a more Infrastructure-as-Code oriented approach, Terraform.

Requirements

Proxmox Host

To execute this role, Ansible needs to access the Proxmox host on which the container will be created. To speficy the host, set pve_host to the hots' inventory name. If you don't want to add the host to your inventory file, you can also add it at runtime with the add_host module - see here for an example.

Controller

The following python modules are required on the controller:

• proxmoxer
• requests

Install via pip: pip3 install proxmoxer requests

Role Variables

See defaults/main.yml or the module argspec

Dependencies

None

Example Playbooks

Basic example

- hosts: all
  gather_facts: no
  roles:
  - lxc_container:
    # This role will connect to this PVE host for various tasks related to container setup
    # Make sure that the pve_host (here: pve1.example.com) is present in your inventory
    # and that ansible can connect via SSH (+ become) and via API
    pve_host: pve1.example.com
    pve_api_user: root@pam
    pve_api_password: some-password
    # Parameters for the container that you want to create
    lxccreate_hostname: a-hostname
    lxccreate_ostemplate: local:vztmpl/ubuntu-20.04-standard_20.04-1_amd64.tar.gz

With a dynamic pve host

If you don't want to clutter your inventory with the PVE host, you can just add it dynamically like so:

- hosts: all
  gather_facts: no
  pre_tasks:
  - name: Add PVE host to runtime inventory
    add_host:
      hostname: pve1.example.com
      ansible_python_interpreter: /usr/bin/python3
      ansible_user: ansible
  roles:
  - lxc_container:
    # This role will connect to this PVE host for various tasks related to container setup
    # Make sure that the pve_host (here: pve1.example.com) is present in your inventory
    # and that ansible can connect via SSH (+ become) and via API
    pve_host: pve1.example.com
    pve_api_user: root@pam
    pve_api_password: some-password
    # Parameters for the container that you want to create
    lxccreate_hostname: a-hostname
    lxccreate_ostemplate: local:vztmpl/ubuntu-20.04-standard_20.04-1_amd64.tar.gz

Batch creation

Creating a batch of containers based on an inventory is also possible using a customized inventory. An example is show here:

Inventory:

all:
  children:
    containers:
      hosts:
        192.168.1.123:
          # Variables unique to every container
          lxccreate_hostname: ct-a
          ...
        192.168.1.124:
        ...
      # Common variables shared between containers
      lxccreate_ostemplate: local:vztmpl/ubuntu-20.04-standard_20.04-1_amd64.tar.gz
      lxccreate_args:
        cores: 4
      # PVE connection variables shared between containers
      pve_api_user: root@pam
      pve_api_password: some-secret-password
      pve_host: pve1.example.com
      ...
  hosts:
    pve1.example.com:
      # Parameters for the PVE API and SSH host.
      ansible_user: root
      ansible_python_interpreter: /usr/bin/python3

  # This will create a set of containers, with each container being a member of the `containers` group
- hosts: containers
  gather_facts: no
  roles:
  - name: lxc_container

License

GPL 3 or later