User:Ncopa/migrate-vserver-to-lxc
Some notes on how to migrate an Alpine Linux vserver to an lxcontainer.
Its fairly straightforward. Basically, the only thing that differs is:
- /etc/inittab
- /etc/network/interfaces
On vserver the host sets up the network, on LXC the container needs to do it itself.
Migration steps
Here follows some step by step. build-edge-x86 is used as example.
Create container
Create the new container on the LXC host
lxc-create -n build-edge-x86 -t alpine -- --release edge --arch x86
Backup inittab
Make a copy of the inittab to a location outside the container rootfs.
cp /var/lib/lxc/build-edge-x86/rootfs/etc/inittab /var/lib/lxc/build-edge-x86/
Copy data
Use rsync to mirror the vserver. We do this before we shut down the vserver guest to keep downtime as low as possible. In this example we rsync from the vserver host:
rsync --partial --delete --numeric-ids -rva /vservers/build-edge/* bld1.alpinelinux.org:/var/lib/lxc/build-ege-x86/rootfs/
Configure networking
While data is copying we can use the time to configure the network. Edit /var/lib/lxc/build-edge-x86/config and set up the network devices. In this example we do:
Contents of /var/lib/lxc/build-edge-x86/config
We can also create a interfaces file that we will copy into the container after old vserver is shutdown.
Contents of /var/lib/lxc/build-edge-x86/interfaces