Cockpit: [Feature Request] Add the ability of manage Systemd-nspawn and/or LXD/LXC containers

[q2dg]

Hello.

With Cockpit is possible to manage Docker containers, Libvirt VMs and even oVirt's ones.
Would it be too complicated embrace other container technologies like Systemd-nspawn or LXD/LXC ?
I know this could be a never-ending race because there are many nearly-overlapping technologies out there, but I ask this only to know if there would be any future plans about this topic.

Thanks!

[petervo]

There is no reason that it couldn't be done but to my knowledge no one is actively working on this right now.

[LaKing]

Systemd-nspawn containers are in essence actually services, and services can be managed by cockpit.
The basic management functionality, to start, stop, restart, enable, disable containers work therefore out of the box. They simply appear under services static - if started as services.

LXC is a bit mor complicated, there are more tools to manage containers. Nspawn also has machinectl that can do more then systemctl.

[KKoukiou]

For the time being there is effort to implement support for podman containers, talking about container runtimes.
https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit-podman/

There hasn't been any effort towards LXC and if there will it will require a total new implementation due to different API that we need to use for this container runtime.

So, is there any real need to implement this functionality or this issue was opened out of pure interest?

[q2dg]

Well, I'd like to be able to manage system containers instead of application containers.
Anyway, with @Laking explanation I'm satisfied relating to system-nspawn but I'd just like to give them more integration with Cockpit, like being able to provision raw images, contigure network interfaces, etc. But well, it's only a wish. On the other hand, if you consider LXC is too much effort, it's fine: with systemd-nspawn is enough. Thanks.

[martinpitt]

This has been sitting around here for too long. This is a major new feature that requires a developer who wants to create and maintain it. This is not within the plans and focus of the cockpit team, sorry. If someone wants to work on this, I recommend building on starter-kit, and we'll be glad to help you with project and CI setup.

[khimaros]

quick note for those who found this while searching for how to manage lxc containers in cockpit. cockpit is able to manage libvirt containers, and libvirt has an lxc driver. requires further investigation.