How to setup LXC containers in Debian

LXC Linux Containers provides the resource management through the control groups aka process containers and resource isolation through the namespaces.

Installation

1. The basic installation of lxc containers requires three package:

   apt-get install bridge-utils debootstrap lxc
   

2. We need to mount the virtual control group file system on /cgroup:

   mkdir /cgroup
   echo "cgroup /cgroup cgroup defaults 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
   mount -a
   

Network Bridge

1. Add network bridge to primary network interface (file /etc/network/interfaces):

   # The primary network interface
   #allow-hotplug eth0
   #iface eth0 inet dhcp
   auto br0
   iface br0 inet dhcp
         bridge_ports eth0
         bridge_fd 0
         bridge_maxwait 0
         bridge_stp off
   

2. Restart networking:

   /etc/init.d/networking restart
   

What is amazing about lxc is how it is savy to resources. A newly started container takes not much but just extra 1M of memory.