Proxmox LXC - How To Guide - Better Than A VM?

This video details how to create a LXC as well as some of the pros and cons of doing so. Please refer to the official documentation for more information regarding options.
LXC Documentation:
pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Linux_Co...
Recommended Hardware: github.com/JamesTurland/JimsG...
Discord: / discord
Twitter: / jimsgarage_
Reddit: / jims-garage
GitHub: github.com/JamesTurland/JimsG...
00:00 - Introduction to Proxmox LXC
05:00 - Download LXC Template
07:38 - How To Create a LXC in Proxmox
13:16 - Starting the LXC (Login)
14:22 - Deploying PiHole for Testing
15:50 - PiHole Working
15:59 - Outro

[@todomal-ho5no]

Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. I have to add that, for a non-English speaker like me, your cadence in speaking and your pronunciation help a lot to understand what you are saying. Good job. 👍

[@Jims-Garage]

Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback

[@golvellius6855]

The way you explain things is top notch bro thank you

[@Jims-Garage]

Thank you, appreciate the feedback.

[@alphenit]

I hear: "Hey everybody...." and I click like! Jim's Garage should have 100k subscribers

[@Jims-Garage]

Haha, thanks 👍

[@elias9725]

Was looking forward to this video, your explanations are great!

[@Jims-Garage]

Thanks, I hope it was helpful

[@markandrow4010]

Thank you James, As always, excellent and with comprehensive explanations.👌 👍

[@Jims-Garage]

Very welcome

[@SchecterWolfe]

The proxmox forums helped me a ton when I was manually setting up a sandbox container from a custom buildroot image

[@Kevin-oj2uo]

I love this Proxmox videos! Keep up the good work!

[@Jims-Garage]

Thanks, I have a few more to tick off at least

[@romayojr]

excellent easy to follow guide as always. i would be interested to see you setup k3s using lxc

[@Jims-Garage]

Thanks, it's coming

[@sagarsriva]

Thanks. Great video

[@Jims-Garage]

Glad you liked it!

[@user-tu3bi5vs6x]

Started watching on the OPNsense setup video and it was very helpful, thank you! I've been wanting to setup Jellyfin in an LXC for GPU transcoding, but it seems like a hassle. Would love a video on it like you mentioned!

[@Jims-Garage]

Thanks, I might do it next. Watch this space.

[@wusaby-ush]

Thank you for this

[@Jims-Garage]

You're welcome

[@malzbier1339]

Very good, as usual 👍🏻.

[@Jims-Garage]

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback

[@cabbagehead8815]

Didn't think I'd be learning from a muckle (MCC) rider! Thanks for sharing your knowledge, see you on the road!

[@Jims-Garage]

Haha, thanks! Keep it shiny side up 🚲

[@s0litaire2k]

LXC is very useful. I've ran both containers and VMs using LXC (yes including a windows VM) issues is that it's it's great for creating and testing systems locally but it's intentionally a total pain in the posterior to "expose" a container to the network. I did use a rpi3b running alpineOS to run a few basic containers I could access from the internet to test things.

[@jerrinho23]

excelent!

[@Jims-Garage]

Thanks

[@philbos6232]

This is so scary every time I’m working with any product, Jim comes around the corner and makes a video about it. Superb! I would really want a guide to install ansible awx on a single node k3s LXC without much hassle, is this even possible? I tried multiple guides with no luck

[@Jims-Garage]

K3S is possible on LXC, I'll have a look at it.

[@blender_wiki]

Why do people always think in "better" or "worse" terms? Please do not implement clickbite titles on your channel. Things are just different, something can be more efficient in some kind situations but not in certain use cases. Besides this good educational video, I will share this to my students. 🙏🙏

[@Jims-Garage]

Appreciate the feedback. The title is reflective of a question that is frequently asked and I do believe there is a better choice in every situation, hopefully I called that out. E.g., internal Vs external, resources, performance.

[@InsaiyanTech]

Could I run the a arr stack on a lxc container and docker with trafik and stuff like you did with the VMs in the previous series?

[@NFvidoJagg2]

I've run the turnkey-gitea template and I've found the they tend to leg behind in software updates, by a few versions.

[@adolfolopez126]

Yes do a video on igpu passthru

[@Jims-Garage]

It's on the way

[@MaxLeeIT]

Thanks for this video and the lovely face

[@YokoOHHNoo]

I recently set up an dedicated game server for the game Enshrouded in Proxmox, alas it's pretty resource hungry. My first try in a VM was very disappointing. I have an Ryzen 4300G running my homelab and i gave the VM 8 vCPUs (so one for each physical thread) and 16 GB RAM. The gaming experience for one connected player was O.K'ish but for three ore more it was unusable. I then switched to a (privileged) LXC also 8 vCPUs but only 8 GB RAM (the game is more CPU than memory hungry). The gaming experience is much(!) better. Now gaming with 3 or 4 players is possible. Nonetheless the Enshrouded dedicated Server is pretty bad performing it consumes almost half of my Homelab which was not the case with other game servers like Valheim e.g.! But yes there are performance gains when using LXC in such "extreme" situations!

[@Jims-Garage]

That's great feedback, thanks. Definitely something to consider if you're looking for high performance.

[@fedefede843]

Nice! My only concern here is how the lifecycle is. When using docker I have watchtower for many of my containers and for the critical ones it is just a manual docker compose pull (or the Portainer GUI). Let's say a move them all to individual LXC containers. Now what? I've seen many of these videos, but no one addresses this important fact. Cheers!

[@Jims-Garage]

No, install docker on LXC. Use docker as normal

[@fedefede843]

@@Jims-Garage that is ok. That could be the best of both worlds. I have read different opinions on installing docker on LXC, but I guess it is a matter of trying it. Do you use it like that or have docker on top of a VM? In my case if I am going to have most of my services in a single environment, it could be just a VM. Since I am not splitting out too much else, why bother. I haven't reached the kubernetes world yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Cheers

[@Jims-Garage]

@@fedefede843 I predominantly use Kubernetes on VMs and have a solo docker VM. I am likely to shift over to LXC in the near future as I want to share my GPU with all containers. I'll do a video on the journey.

[@2bitninja280]

Reminds me of Solaris Zones

[@samsonsamson9820]

Thank you for your video. How to create an LXC container with docker or k3s?

[@Jims-Garage]

Docker , just install as I did. K3S, coming soon

[@denniskluytmans]

Docker is easy, docker swarm is the problem with nfs shares

[@monish05m]

Amazing guide as usual. One question, is it possible to pass through individual disks to an lxc, not just mount point, the entire hard disk?

[@Jims-Garage]

Yes, albeit I think we need to be careful with wording. My understanding is that you're giving the LXC access to the device, not passing it through like a VM. As such, the host can see it as well as other LXCs if you allow it. This is how I'm able to share a single GPU with 3 LXCs.

[@monish05m]

@@Jims-Garage i was also able to pass through my nvidia gpu to lxc using cgroups in the .conf file, the thing is the same method would not work for disks for some reason, the disk just wont be listed under /dev/disk/by-id/ , if you had any luck please pass the knowledge.

[@dzmelinux7769]

Good video, as much as I know another difference is that VMs restart automatically after migration (cluster) and LXC container have to be started manually, right?

[@Jims-Garage]

I'll have to check. I know they can auto start on creation.

[@meandthemrs896]

Would you consider doing a video on utilising LXC container for something like Radarr using the helper templates - I tried this but had lots of issues with access rights writing to shared storage ?

[@Jims-Garage]

Probably not as KZbin isn't a fan of those topics... I suspect it's a simple case of permissions though.

[@meandthemrs896]

How about making a shared drive available to a container. My issue is being asked multiple times without a good answer 😊

[@Jims-Garage]

@@meandthemrs896 check here for a cifs example - forum.proxmox.com/threads/tutorial-unprivileged-lxcs-mount-cifs-shares.101795/page-4

[@meandthemrs896]

Tried it all commands worked but still read only. I think I have an issue making sure the LXC uses the right user account when running - it does mention username depends on application

[@ziozzot]

I woud like to see K3s on LXC

[@Jims-Garage]

It's in the works!

[@74357175]

Excellent. Question: how much thinner is an LXC vs a VM? That is to say, if a Debian install as a VM is X megabytes, how much smaller is the LXC install?

[@Jims-Garage]

About 20x smaller

[@peteradshead2383]

Well I have a SMB server with Webmin on 81k of ram , netboot-xyz on 81k , and jellyfin on 374k , so most programs only need 512k or less , try running a running jellyfin on a 512k VM .

[@afnieves]

Can you show a video on the iGPU and jellyfin. I have this setup on a NUC got all the configuration working but jellyfin cant transcode.

[@Jims-Garage]

It should be exactly the same but 128 instead of 129. Have you tried that?

[@afnieves]

lxc.cgroup2.devices.allow: c 226:0 rwm lxc.cgroup2.devices.allow: c 226:128 rwm lxc.mount.entry: /dev/dri/renderD128 dev/dri/renderD128 none bind,optional,create=file lxc.mount.entry: /dev/dri/card0 dev/dri/card0 none bind,optional,create=file lxc.mount.entry: /dev/fb0 dev/fb0 none bind,optional,create=file lxc.idmap: u 0 100000 65536 lxc.idmap: g 0 100000 44 lxc.idmap: g 44 44 1 lxc.idmap: g 45 100045 61 lxc.idmap: g 106 103 1 lxc.idmap: g 108 100108 65428 @@Jims-Garage

[@afnieves]

Yes I have@@Jims-Garage

[@Felix-ve9hs]

11:24 AFAIK your LXCs will use the swap space of your Proxmox VE host, if it doesn't have swap set up, the LXC will likely get killed trying to allocate any swap.

[@Jims-Garage]

Good to know, I'll have to experiment. Thanks for the comments.

[@Felix-ve9hs]

1:09 This is true, however, it is possible to run a Linux userland in a FreeBSD jail :^)

[@peteradshead2383]

One problem you may hit if you are on AMD and passing hardware acceleration to jellyfin or frigate , to pass your GPU with PCIe passthrough you blacklist nvidia and radeon , amdgpu drivers etc. So stopped the hardware acceleration from the GPU until I removed the radeon & amdgpu from the blacklist.

[@pabloszi]

Hmmm... With LXC you don't need to passthru PCI-e devices. You can share it between your desired LXC, Proxmox OS and other LXCs you want.

[@peteradshead2383]

@@pabloszi you don't , BUT if you do pass a full PCI-e device to a VM don't disable the inbuilt iGPU at the same time. I pass iGPU hardware encoding / decoding to a Frigate & Jellyfin LXCs , but have a VM with my RTX2070 super to use for tdarr.

[@pabloszi]

@@peteradshead2383 That's right. It works as you described with VM, but LXC isn't VM. LXC is Linux container, and you can't passthru PCI cards to LXC. Instead of this you can share devices between Proxmox host and LXCs.

[@InSaiyan-Shinobi]

So can I run docker in lxc and do the same setup you do on a vm setup like for jellyfin radar sonar and so on for it? But would you want to do on a lxc this way since I heard it’s not as secured as doing it on a VM

[@Jims-Garage]

That is what I demonstrated, Jellyfin on Docker with GPU passthrough in a unprivileged LXC.

[@InSaiyan-Shinobi]

@@Jims-Garage oh ok I just wanted to make sure so ima just follow this thanks 😊

[@zyghom]

I have started with Proxmox with VMs only as it was much easier to work with (for the newbie like me). But now, I move almost everything to LXC. Lighter but most importantly: I feel much better with IP management - rather than assigning MACVLAN in docker (in VM). Sharing the storage sometimes is an issue but once you know how to it is easy. But still there is a place for VMs there.

[@Jims-Garage]

Absolutely, both have strengths and weaknesses. As always, a blend is usually best.

[@hotrodhunk7389]

I've overtime moved all of my VMs to be LXC. They just do everything so quick. Boot in seconds so small easy to back up and migrate.

[@Jims-Garage]

Yes, they're extremely performant. It's a great benefit.

[@produKtNZ]

If I wanted to spin up a wordpress website, hosting around 80-400 gb per month, VM or Container ?

[@Jims-Garage]

VM, better isolation IMO

[@Mr_nah]

Is there a way to upgrade an OS in a container? I don't think do-distr upgrade works

[@brunekxxx91]

It does

[@ierosgr]

At 7:58 you ve mentioned you were going to be using a non root user. At 13:25 you re logging in as root.

[@Jims-Garage]

I'm root on the LXC, but in a separate namespace on the host. If privileged you're using the host namespace which is bad. You can create another user on the LXC like any regular Linux distro

[@ierosgr]

@@Jims-Garage The other way I thought of this was like the root inside the LXC is alias of another user of the host which automatically generates upon LXC creation. It just happens to have the root name.

[@loermik]

lovely face 😄

[@---GOD---]

Jump to 5:00 You're welcome

[@Jims-Garage]

Haha, thanks 😂