Debian squeeze install OpenVZ

I have a tiny embedded server (acrosser model) Intel Celeron with only 400MHz and 512MB Mem total. Before I upgraded debian to squeeze I used Xen, now its time to use OpenVZ.

Reasons:
– My tiny hardware:)
– Container virtualization – I can use more virtual machines
– Less memory usage – Container cannot boot

OpenVZ kernel and the vzctl and vzquota packages are available in the Debian repositories, so we can install them as follows:

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aptitude update ; aptitude install linux-image-openvz-686 vzctl vzquota

Create a symlink from /var/lib/vz to /vz to provide backward compatibility and better usage:

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ln -s /var/lib/vz /vz

Open vim /etc/sysctl.conf and make sure that you have the following settings in it:

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[...]
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
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.proxy_arp = 1
[...]

View now your current config:

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sysctl -p

Now its time to reboot and start your new kernel:

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 reboot

After reboot you should see your fresh installed kernel:

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nibbler ~ # uname -a
Linux nibbler 2.6.32-5-openvz-686 #1 SMP Tue Mar 8 23:30:33 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux

Now we create our fist container, to do this we need a working template. A lot of templates can be founded here.
Of course you can create your own template. I describe it later:)

Choose one and download it to your template directory:

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cd /vz/template/cache  
wget http://download.openvz.org/template/precreated/contrib/debian-6.0-i386-minimal.tar.gz

After download don’t extract it!

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vzctl create 01 --ostemplate debian-6.0-i386-minimal
vzctl set 01 --ipadd 192.168.1.77 --save
vzctl set 01 --nameserver 192.168.1.1 --save
vzctl set 01 --hostname gitcher --save
vzctl start 01
ping 192.168.1.77
vzctl exec 01 passwd
vzctl enter 01

Some basic commands:

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vzlist
vzlist -a
vzctl stop 01
vzctl start 01
vzctl restart 01
vzctl status 01
vzctl umount 01
vzctl destroy 01
allocate disk space
vzctl set 01 --diskspace "10000000:11000000" --save

UPDATE 30.06.2011 – Fix the default gateway
After VE creating the default gateway will be: 192.0.2.1 but whit is not my network.
You can set the default gateway in: /etc/vz/dists/scripts/functions

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vim /etc/vz/dists/scripts/functions
FAKEGATEWAY=192.168.1.1