Install with LXD

LXD is a manager for Linux-based containers (LXC), offering a user experience similar to virtual machines without the same overheads.

Using LXD to install MAAS into containers is a good choice for users who want to test MAAS, or who may want to continue leveraging an existing container architecture or policy.

MAAS running with LXD has the following requirements:

• a network bridge on the LXD host (e.g. lxdbr0)
• LXD and ZFS
• a container profile

Install LXD and ZFS

Begin by installing LXD and ZFS:

sudo apt install lxd zfsutils-linux
sudo modprobe zfs
sudo lxd init

The sudo lxd init command will trigger a series of configuration questions. Except in the case where the randomly chosen subnet may conflict with an existing one in your local environment, all questions can be answered with their default values.

The bridge network is configured via a second round of questions and is named lxdbr0 by default.

Create a LXC profile for MAAS

First create a container profile by making use of the 'default' profile:

lxc profile copy default maas

Second, bind the network interface inside the container (eth0) to the bridge on the physical host (lxdbr0):

lxc profile device set maas eth0 parent lxdbr0

Thirdly, the maas container profile needs to be edited to include a specific set of privileges. Enter the following to open the profile in your editor of choice:

lxc profile edit maas

And replace the {} after config with the following (excluding config:):

config:
  raw.lxc: |-
    lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = c 10:237 rwm
    lxc.apparmor.profile = unconfined
    lxc.cgroup.devices.allow = b 7:* rwm
  security.privileged: "true"

The final step adds the 8 necessary loop devices to LXC:

for i in `seq 0 7`; do lxc profile device add maas loop$i unix-block path=/dev/loop$i; done

When correctly configured, the above command outputs Device loop0 added to maas for each loop device.

Launch and access the LXD container

Launch the LXD container:

lxc launch -p maas ubuntu:16.04 bionic-maas

Once the container is running, it can be accessed with:

lxc exec bionic-maas bash

Install MAAS

In the container (or containers), install MAAS via packages. See Install from packages.