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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xml:id="sec-imperative-containers">
<title>Imperative Container Management</title>
<para>
We’ll cover imperative container management using
<literal>nixos-container</literal> first. Be aware that container
management is currently only possible as <literal>root</literal>.
</para>
<para>
You create a container with identifier <literal>foo</literal> as
follows:
</para>
<programlisting>
# nixos-container create foo
</programlisting>
<para>
This creates the container’s root directory in
<literal>/var/lib/nixos-containers/foo</literal> and a small
configuration file in
<literal>/etc/nixos-containers/foo.conf</literal>. It also builds
the container’s initial system configuration and stores it in
<literal>/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-container/foo/system</literal>.
You can modify the initial configuration of the container on the
command line. For instance, to create a container that has
<literal>sshd</literal> running, with the given public key for
<literal>root</literal>:
</para>
<programlisting>
# nixos-container create foo --config '
services.openssh.enable = true;
users.users.root.openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = ["ssh-dss AAAAB3N…"];
'
</programlisting>
<para>
By default the next free address in the
<literal>10.233.0.0/16</literal> subnet will be chosen as container
IP. This behavior can be altered by setting
<literal>--host-address</literal> and
<literal>--local-address</literal>:
</para>
<programlisting>
# nixos-container create test --config-file test-container.nix \
--local-address 10.235.1.2 --host-address 10.235.1.1
</programlisting>
<para>
Creating a container does not start it. To start the container, run:
</para>
<programlisting>
# nixos-container start foo
</programlisting>
<para>
This command will return as soon as the container has booted and has
reached <literal>multi-user.target</literal>. On the host, the
container runs within a systemd unit called
<literal>container@container-name.service</literal>. Thus, if
something went wrong, you can get status info using
<literal>systemctl</literal>:
</para>
<programlisting>
# systemctl status container@foo
</programlisting>
<para>
If the container has started successfully, you can log in as root
using the <literal>root-login</literal> operation:
</para>
<programlisting>
# nixos-container root-login foo
[root@foo:~]#
</programlisting>
<para>
Note that only root on the host can do this (since there is no
authentication). You can also get a regular login prompt using the
<literal>login</literal> operation, which is available to all users
on the host:
</para>
<programlisting>
# nixos-container login foo
foo login: alice
Password: ***
</programlisting>
<para>
With <literal>nixos-container run</literal>, you can execute
arbitrary commands in the container:
</para>
<programlisting>
# nixos-container run foo -- uname -a
Linux foo 3.4.82 #1-NixOS SMP Thu Mar 20 14:44:05 UTC 2014 x86_64 GNU/Linux
</programlisting>
<para>
There are several ways to change the configuration of the container.
First, on the host, you can edit
<literal>/var/lib/container/name/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</literal>,
and run
</para>
<programlisting>
# nixos-container update foo
</programlisting>
<para>
This will build and activate the new configuration. You can also
specify a new configuration on the command line:
</para>
<programlisting>
# nixos-container update foo --config '
services.httpd.enable = true;
services.httpd.adminAddr = "foo@example.org";
networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ 80 ];
'
# curl http://$(nixos-container show-ip foo)/
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">…
</programlisting>
<para>
However, note that this will overwrite the container’s
<literal>/etc/nixos/configuration.nix</literal>.
</para>
<para>
Alternatively, you can change the configuration from within the
container itself by running <literal>nixos-rebuild switch</literal>
inside the container. Note that the container by default does not
have a copy of the NixOS channel, so you should run
<literal>nix-channel --update</literal> first.
</para>
<para>
Containers can be stopped and started using
<literal>nixos-container stop</literal> and
<literal>nixos-container start</literal>, respectively, or by using
<literal>systemctl</literal> on the container’s service unit. To
destroy a container, including its file system, do
</para>
<programlisting>
# nixos-container destroy foo
</programlisting>
</section>
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