Installing And Using OpenVZ On Debian Etch
Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme
In this HowTo I will describe how to prepare a Debian Etch server for OpenVZ. With OpenVZ you can create multiple Virtual Private Servers (VPS) on the same hardware, similar to Xen and the Linux Vserver project. OpenVZ is the open-source branch of Virtuozzo, a commercial virtualization solution used by many providers that offer virtual servers. The OpenVZ kernel patch is licensed under the GPL license, and the user-level tools are under the QPL license.
This howto is meant as a practical guide; it does not cover the theoretical backgrounds. They are treated in a lot of other documents in the web.
This document comes without warranty of any kind! I want to say that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!
1 Installing OpenVZ
In order to install OpenVZ, we need to add the OpenVZ repository to our /etc/apt/sources.list:
vi /etc/apt/sources.list
[...] deb http://download.openvz.org/debian-systs etch openvz [...] |
Run
wget -q http://download.openvz.org/debian-systs/dso_archiv_signing_key.asc -O- | apt-key add - && apt-get update
afterwards to download the key of that repository and update the package database.
The repository contains six OpenVZ kernel from which you must choose one. The ovzkernel packages use the original OpenVZ kernel configuration, the fzakernel packages use the default Debian kernel configuration plus OpenVZ settings:
- ovzkernel-2.6.18: uniprocessor | up to 4GB of RAM | i386 and amd64
- ovzkernel-2.6.18-smp: symmetric multiprocessor | up to 4 GB of RAM | i386 and amd64
- ovzkernel-2.6.18-enterprise: SMP + PAE support + 4/4GB split | up to 64 GB of RAM | i386 only
- fzakernel-2.6.18-686: uni- and multiprocessor | up to 4GB of RAM | i386
- fzakernel-2.6.18-686-bigmem: symmetric multiprocessor | up to 64 GB of RAM | i386
- fzakernel-2.6.18-amd64: uni- and multiprocessor | amd64
Pick one of them and install it as follows:
apt-get install fzakernel-2.6.18-686-bigmem
Next update the GRUB boot loader:
update-grub
Now we install some OpenVZ user tools plus a minimal Debian Etch OS template which we can use to create virtual machines:
apt-get install vzctl vzquota vzctl-ostmpl-debian vzprocps vzdump
Create a symlink from /var/lib/vz to /vz to provide backward compatibility:
ln -s /var/lib/vz /vz
Open /etc/sysctl.conf and make sure that you have the following settings in it:
vi /etc/sysctl.conf
[...] net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter=1 net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts=1 net.ipv4.conf.default.forwarding=1 net.ipv4.conf.default.proxy_arp = 0 net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 kernel.sysrq = 1 net.ipv4.conf.default.send_redirects = 1 net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects = 0 [...] |
If you need to modify /etc/sysctl.conf, run
sysctl -p
afterwards.
The following step is important if the IP addresses of your virtual machines are from a different subnet than the host system's IP address. If you don't do this, networking will not work in the virtual machines!
Open /etc/vz/vz.conf and set NEIGHBOUR_DEVS to all:
vi /etc/vz/vz.conf
[...] NEIGHBOUR_DEVS=all [...] |
Finally, reboot the system:
reboot
If your system reboots without problems, then everything is fine!
Run
uname -r
and your new OpenVZ kernel should show up:
server1:~# uname -r
2.6.18-fza-028stab053.5-686-bigmem
server1:~#
2 Using OpenVZ
I will now show you the basic commands for using OpenVZ.
To set up a VPS from the default minimal Debian Etch template (you can find it in /var/lib/vz/template/cache), run:
vzctl create 101 --ostemplate debian-4.0-i386-minimal --config vps.basic
The 101 must be a uniqe ID - each virtual machine must have its own unique ID. You can use the last part of the virtual machine's IP address for it. For example, if the virtual machine's IP address is 1.2.3.101, you use 101 as the ID.
If you want to have the vm started at boot, run
vzctl set 101 --onboot yes --save
To set a hostname and IP address for the vm, run:
vzctl set 101 --hostname test.example.com --save
vzctl set 101 --ipadd 1.2.3.101 --save
Next we set the number of sockets to 120 and assign a few nameservers to the vm:
vzctl set 101 --numothersock 120 --save
vzctl set 101 --nameserver 213.133.98.98 --nameserver 213.133.99.99 --nameserver 213.133.100.100 --nameserver 145.253.2.75 --save
(Instead of using the vzctl set commands, you can as well directly edit the vm's configuration file which is stored in the /etc/vz/conf directory. If the ID of the vm is 101, then the configuration file is /etc/vz/conf/101.conf.)
To start the vm, run
vzctl start 101
To set a root password for the vm, execute
vzctl exec 101 passwd
You can now either connect to the vm via SSH (e.g. with PuTTY), or you enter it as follows:
vzctl enter 101
To leave the vm's console, type
exit
To stop a vm, run
vzctl stop 101
To restart a vm, run
vzctl restart 101
To delete a vm from the hard drive (it must be stopped before you can do this), run
vzctl destroy 101
To get a list of your vms and their statuses, run
vzlist -a
server1:~# vzlist -a
VEID NPROC STATUS IP_ADDR HOSTNAME
101 6 running 1.2.3.101 test.example.com
server1:~#
To find out about the resources allocated to a vm, run
vzctl exec 101 cat /proc/user_beancounters
server1:~# vzctl exec 101 cat /proc/user_beancounters
Version: 2.5
uid resource held maxheld barrier limit failcnt
101: kmemsize 500737 517142 11055923 11377049 0
lockedpages 0 0 256 256 0
privvmpages 2315 2337 65536 69632 0
shmpages 640 640 21504 21504 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
numproc 7 7 240 240 0
physpages 1258 1289 0 2147483647 0
vmguarpages 0 0 33792 2147483647 0
oomguarpages 1258 1289 26112 2147483647 0
numtcpsock 2 2 360 360 0
numflock 1 1 188 206 0
numpty 1 1 16 16 0
numsiginfo 0 1 256 256 0
tcpsndbuf 17856 17856 1720320 2703360 0
tcprcvbuf 32768 32768 1720320 2703360 0
othersockbuf 2232 2928 1126080 2097152 0
dgramrcvbuf 0 0 262144 262144 0
numothersock 1 3 120 120 0
dcachesize 0 0 3409920 3624960 0
numfile 189 189 9312 9312 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
dummy 0 0 0 0 0
numiptent 10 10 128 128 0
server1:~#
The failcnt column is very important, it should contain only zeros; if it doesn't, this means that the vm needs more resources than are currently allocated to the vm. Open the vm's configuration file in /etc/vz/conf and raise the appropriate resource, then restart the vm.
To find out more about the vzctl command, run
man vzctl
3 Links
- OpenVZ: http://openvz.org
- Debian: http://www.debian.org
