[Lxc-users] Control panel

[Matto Fransen]

Hi all,

This thread is becoming more interesting all the time :)

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 11:06:53AM +0000, Stuart Johnson wrote:
> > If you're in a production environment, you will tend to start or stop 
> > your containers as seldom as you will start and stop your servers.
> 
> 
> I see this as a good reason to have a simple control panel. When you 
> seldom use something, you tend to forget how to do things, or in the 
> case of manageing multiple servers, you forget how each one is 
> configured. A simple visual interface helps to get the job done with the 
> confidence your not going to break anything.
> 
> As a developer, I may be required to install something on a clients 
> machine, and I want to set up a container to protect their system and 
> myself from any mishap.  A simple ncurses app, would allow me to add a 
> container without worrying about what distro i am using, or interfering 
> with existing containers should there be any.
 
Here you touch another interesting aspect. And that is what you tend
to run inside containers. The LXC Linux Containers provide us with
a beautifull light and elegant solution. 

So suppose you have a nice text-mode application to create and manage
containers, what will you install into them, and how would you 
like to do that?

If you go for a small, simple and elegant solution like LXC, then put 
something small and specific to the job in them. Which means a container 
that contains just enough to get the job done.

Putting a full Ubuntu or Fedora distro inside a container is IMHO something
of a contradiction towards the container approach. If you go for 
bloat, you might as well use kvm or xen to run that distro.

> As a newbie, I may want to try LXC out without a steep learning curve.

IMHO that requires available container-images, ready to run. Something
like what http://www.turnkeylinux.org provides, but than in container-format.
That would be really cool ...

Cheers,

Matto