[lxc-users] What is right way to backup and restore linux containers?

Fri Dec 4 20:04:17 UTC 2015

For what it's worth, my notes from various research indicate:

======= MOVING LXC CONTAINERS =====
 When moving from one server to another, important NOT to copy it.  All
permissions
 inside container must be preserved.  This is done by the following:

On OLD server
tar --numeric-owner -czvf mycontainer.tgz /var/lib/lxc/my_container

On NEW server
tar --numeric-owner -xzvf mycontainer.tgz -C /var/lib/lxc/

Be sure to set the appropriate IP address info on new location if it will
change.
==============================
I believe this is what I used the last time and it worked.

Thanks,

Mark.

On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 12:43 PM Bostjan Skufca <bostjan at a2o.si> wrote:

> "man tar"
>
>
> https://www.google.si/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=tar%20preserve%20everything
>
> I would suggest -p and --numeric-owner and maybe --acl and --xattrs, but,
> as I said before, I generally use rsync.
>
> b.
>
> On 4 December 2015 at 18:20, Saint Michael <venefax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What would it be the right tar parameters to compress and decompress all
>> the rootfs, including devices and special files?
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Bostjan Skufca <bostjan at a2o.si> wrote:
>>
>>> Depends if you need consistent copy and how much downtime you can
>>> tolerate.
>>>
>>> If inconsistent copy is enough, then you can run rsync over storage of
>>> running container (on host, not in container) and be done with it.
>>>
>>> Rsync:
>>> I find rsync useful and fast, providing that:
>>> - whole container filesystem metadata fits into memory
>>> - not too much data changes between subsequent rsync runs
>>>
>>> So, my simplified procedure is:
>>> 1: rsync #1 - does most of the work, takes time, but can be run on
>>> running container
>>> 2: rsync #2 - to see how much files have changed since initial run
>>> (gives good estimate of upcoming downtime)
>>> 3: lxc-stop -n container (on host 1)
>>> 4: rsync #3
>>> 5: lxc-start -n container (on host 2)
>>>
>>> This procedure gives me about 10 seconds of downtime for containers with
>>> small filesystems (up to 50GB).
>>>
>>> Block device migration:
>>> Rsync is fast if it operates on not-too-many-files. If you are getting
>>> long rsync runs because of amount of small files, then you might be better
>>> off migrating whole block device. You can go about it with LVM or btrfs
>>> snapshots too. I do not usually use this.
>>>
>>>
>>> LXC vs LXD:
>>> LXC in generally single-host-centred, so you have to do things manually.
>>> LXD on the other hand supports operations on multiple hosts, but others
>>> are more qualified to summarize what is currently possible (creating LXD
>>> host associations between on-premises and cloud-provider hosts etc.)
>>>
>>> b.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 4 December 2015 at 17:32, Saint Michael <venefax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I was going t ask the same question.
>>>> It  is a very important one. I am moving containers via rsync, but it
>>>> takes tooo long.
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 11:03 AM, Eax Melanhovich <afiskon at devzen.ru>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hello.
>>>>>
>>>>> Lets say I have some container. I would like to run something like:
>>>>>
>>>>> lxc-backup -n test-container my-backup.tgz
>>>>>
>>>>> Then move backup somewhere (say, to Amazon S3). Then say I would like
>>>>> to restore my container or create its copy on different machine. So I
>>>>> need something like:
>>>>>
>>>>> lxc-restore -n copy-of-container my-backup.tgz
>>>>>
>>>>> I discovered lxc-snapshot, but it doesn't do exactly what I need.
>>>>>
>>>>> So what is the right way of backuping and restoring linux containers?
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>> Eax Melanhovich
>>>>> http://eax.me/
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> lxc-users mailing list
>>>>> lxc-users at lists.linuxcontainers.org
>>>>> http://lists.linuxcontainers.org/listinfo/lxc-users
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> lxc-users mailing list
>>>> lxc-users at lists.linuxcontainers.org
>>>> http://lists.linuxcontainers.org/listinfo/lxc-users
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> lxc-users mailing list
>>> lxc-users at lists.linuxcontainers.org
>>> http://lists.linuxcontainers.org/listinfo/lxc-users
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> lxc-users mailing list
>> lxc-users at lists.linuxcontainers.org
>> http://lists.linuxcontainers.org/listinfo/lxc-users
>>
> _______________________________________________
> lxc-users mailing list
> lxc-users at lists.linuxcontainers.org
> http://lists.linuxcontainers.org/listinfo/lxc-users
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linuxcontainers.org/pipermail/lxc-users/attachments/20151204/91fa01b2/attachment.html>