Ubuntu on VMware with LXD containers

vmware-ubuntu-workspace.md

Paraphrased/edited/slightly updated form of: http://mike.teczno.com/notes/disposable-virtualbox-lxc-environments.html

VM Setup

Download an Ubuntu Server ISO (http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server)

Create a new VMWare virtual machine, select boot from the ISO with 2 NICs configured as "Share with My Mac" & "Private to my Mac" respectively. During the creation of the Ubuntu VM there will be a page to select installed software, select "OpenSSH server".

VM Networking

Log in to the newly created VM and install bridge-utils:

apt install bridge-utils

Edit /etc/network/interfaces with a bridge each for the 2 network cards, both DHCP (ip link show will give you the correct names for these interfaces).

## The primary network interface
#auto ens33
#iface ens33 inet dhcp

auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
        bridge_ports ens33
        bridge_fd 0
        bridge_maxwait 0
        dns-search home

auto br1
iface br1 inet dhcp
        bridge_ports ens38
        bridge_fd 0
        bridge_maxwait 0
        dns-search local

Restart sudo reboot, and you should now be able to ping the outside world.

$ ping 8.8.8.8

PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_req=1 ttl=63 time=340 ms
…

Install open-vm-tools:

$ apt install open-vm-tools

Avahi on VM

Next, set up Avahi to broadcast host names so we don’t need to remember DHCP-assigned IP addresses. On the Ubuntu host, install avahi-daemon:

$ apt install avahi-daemon

In the configuration file /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf, change these lines to clarify that our host names need only work on the second, host-only network adapter:

allow-interfaces=br1,ens38
deny-interfaces=br0,ens33,lxdbr0

Then restart Avahi:

$ sudo service avahi-daemon restart

Now, you should be able to ping and ssh to $hostname from within the virtual machine and your Mac command line.

LXD server (Ubuntu VM)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-lxc/lxd-stable
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

See: https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/getting-started-cli/

$ sudo apt install zfsutils-linux
$ sudo lxd init

Generate a new LXD profile from the script here: https://gist.github.com/earnubs/7dffc5bb5fe613d02ef9fc924cc583ee

Test out lxc launch:

$ lxc launch ubuntu:16.10 --ephemeral -p $USER
$ lxc list
+--------------+---------+--------------------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
|     NAME     |  STATE  |              IPV4              | IPV6 |   TYPE    | SNAPSHOTS |
+--------------+---------+--------------------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
| enabling-ape | RUNNING | 192.168.234.179 (eth0)         |      | EPHEMERAL | 0         |
|              |         | 172.16.183.150 (eth1)          |      |           |           |
+--------------+---------+--------------------------------+------+-----------+-----------+

NB. It may take a few minutes for cloud-init to configure and restart eth1.

Allow remote operations on the LXD server (from macOS)

lxc config set core.https_address "[::]"
lxc config set core.trust_password some-password

LXD client (macOS)

With a working Go setup:

$ go get github.com/lxc/lxd
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/lxc/lxd
$ go install -v ./lxc

$ lxc remote add <name> UBUNTU_VM_HOST.local

Finally, on macOS

$ ssh enabling-ape.local -A

sudo modprobe ip_tables
sudo modprobe ip6_tables

ufw complaining about iptables:

ERROR: initcaps
[Errno 2] modprobe: ERROR: ../libkmod/libkmod.c:556 kmod_search_moddep() could not open moddep file '/lib/modules/4.4.0-59-generic/modules.dep.bin'
iptables v1.4.21: can't initialize iptables table `filter': Table does not exist (do you need to insmod?)
Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded.

On the host:

sudo modprobe ip_tables

From https://www.stgraber.org/2017/01/13/kubernetes-inside-lxd/:

lxc launch ubuntu:16.04 kubernetes -c security.privileged=true -c security.nesting=true -c linux.kernel_modules=ip_tables,ip6_tables,netlink_diag,nf_nat,overlay -c raw.lxc=lxc.aa_profile=unconfined

also, lxd -c linux.kernel_modules=ip_tables,ip6_tables may be a simpler (and more robust) alternative