LXC and Shorewall Tom Eastep 2011 Thomas M. Eastep Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.
Background LXC (http://lxc.sourceforge.net/) is a set of user-space tools for managing the container capabilities that have been in the Linux Kernel since 2.6.27. This short article describes how I've implemented LXC here at shorewall.net, with emphasis on the networking and firewall aspects.
Overview of a Working Configuration The following diagram shows the network at shorewall.net in the spring of 2011. As shown in that diagram, the LXC containers are bridged to br0. Here are the relevant configuration entries. /etc/network/interfaces: # # LXC bridge # auto br0 iface br0 inet static bridge_ports none bridge_fd 0 address 70.90.191.121 broadcast 0.0.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.255 post-up ip route add 70.90.191.124/31 dev br0 iface br0 inet6 static address 2001:470:b:227::41 netmask 124 /etc/lxc/mail.conflxc.network.type=veth lxc.network.link=br0 lxc.network.flags=up lxc.network.ipv4=70.90.191.124/29 lxc.network.ipv6=2001:470:b:227::42/124 … /etc/lxc/server.conflxc.network.type=veth lxc.network.link=br0 lxc.network.flags=up lxc.network.ipv4=70.90.191.125/29 lxc.network.ipv6=2001:470:b:227::43/124 … Note that I have subnetted 2001:470:b:227::/64 with a /124 (2001:470:b:227::40/124) assigned to the bridge. To make those addresses accessible from the LOC zone, the following entries are required in /etc/shorewall6/proxyndp: #ADDRESS INTERFACE EXTERNAL HAVEROUTE PERSISTENT 2001:470:b:227::41 - eth1 Yes Yes 2001:470:b:227::42 - eth1 Yes Yes 2001:470:b:227::43 - eth1 Yes Yes The entries in the LXC .conf files are expected to configure eth0 in the LXC containers; they do, sort of. In both of the containers, no ipv6 default route was assigned. I corrected that by adding this entry in /etc/sysctl.conf in both containers: net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=0 I then added this stanza to /etc/radvd.conf on the host: interface br0{ AdvSendAdvert on; MinRtrAdvInterval 300; MaxRtrAdvInterval 505; AdvDefaultLifetime 9000; route ::/0 { AdvRouteLifetime infinity; }; }; Curiosly, LXC gives container mail's eth0 this somewhat odd configuration, and fails to add a default ipv4 route: 14: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000 link/ether 4e:56:66:11:3c:6b brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 70.90.191.124/29 brd 70.90.191.120 scope global eth0 inet6 2001:470:b:227::42/124 scope global valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever inet6 fe80::4c56:66ff:fe11:3c6b/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever So in that container's /etc/rc.local, I also have: ip route add default via 70.90.191.121 With the exception of the entries in /etc/shorewall6/proxyndp. the Shorewall and Shorewall6 configurations are fairly conventional three-interface setups. In both configurations, the interfaces file entry for br0 has the option specified.