[Lxc-users] Control panel

[Brian K. White]

On 3/16/2011 5:11 AM, Geordy Korte wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 12:42 PM, Stuart Johnson <stuart at stu.org.uk
> <mailto:stuart at stu.org.uk>> wrote:
>
>
>      > maybe just define what you want. Gathering ideas could/would inspire
>      > someone to implement it.
>
>     Ideally I want a simple ncurses application that shows you what
>     containers are active, and allows simple functionality, such as create,
>     start, stop and configure settings.  Super easy to install, and runs
>     from the ssh console. No need for web servers, or opening up special
>     ports.
>
> Hello,
>
> Had some time to spare and decided that I would pitch in. Attached a
> simple dialog system that will allow you to start/stop an lxc container
> and open the console.  It's really really really early (lol took me 5
> minutes) but let me know if this is what you are looking for and if so
> what you would like to have added to it.
>
> You need the dialog package for this to work:
> apt-get install dialog
> --
> Geordy Korte

This is a great start.

Although it's true what has been said that a real curses (or other 
compiled) app will ultimately be able to do a lot more by using liblxc, 
I really want to build on this in the mean time. I already have several 
things I want to do to it to use in conjunction with my inid.d script 
for openSUSE.

With almost trivial additions I could have it integrate with my 
particular config scheme so that this could also:

* start/stop all containers
* mark a container as enabled/disabled for automatic start at (host) boot
* display per/container status like process list
* poor-mans-top that adds a column to show what container a process 
belongs to
* display other misc info that's handy for the host admin, like the 
ip's/bridges/vlans associated with each container, rootfs and other 
mounts, etc.
* display/edit container config

With somewhat more work I could add:

* a wizard to create new containers (very simple at first, where it only 
creates one kind of container system)
* iotop-alike that shows container
* iftop-alike that shows container
* wall one or all containers

Can we put this up in a google code project, or do you mind if I do it?

A few of the things I want will be specific to openSUSE, or rather, 
specific to how I chose to do my init.d, since there is no standard yet, 
I just made up my own. But I still think it shouldn't be too hard to 
make this distribution agnostic. The wizard to create a container will 
just use template scripts and I'll just supply an openSUSE template 
script. The init.d integration is the only thing that will be really 
distribution specific but that is very simple.

I'd love to get a few more things into it and include it into my rclxc 
package for openSUSE or make it it's own package.

-- 
bkw