Install LXC from upstream source on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 0 comments

Published on August 24th 2019 - Listed in LXC Linux

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The following steps explain how to compile and install LXC from source on an Ubuntu 18.04 LTS where the same directory paths (as known from the installation through the package) are used. These steps are based on pretty much the same steps for Ubuntu 14.04.

Getting the source code

The source code of the LXC project is located on Github. Therefore the whole Git repository can be cloned or downloaded in zip format.

Install the packages needed to download, if you haven't installed these already:

ckadm@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install git wget curl

To clone (= download) the Git repository use the git command:

ckadm@ubuntu:~$ git clone https://github.com/Napsty/lxc.git

Or use a zip file download of the current state of the repository:

ckadm@ubuntu:~$ wget https://github.com/lxc/lxc/archive.master.zip; unzip master.zip

Change into the cloned or unzipped repository:

ckadm@ubuntu:~$ if [ -d lxc ]; then cd lxc; elif [ -d lxc-master]; then cd lxc-master; fi

Compiling the source code

Before the source code can be compiled, a few packages need to be installed first:

ckadm@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install build-essential automake autoconf pkg-config docbook2x libapparmor-dev libselinux1-dev libpython3-dev python3-dev libcap-dev libtool

Now everything should be ready. To create the configure command, autogen needs to be launched first:

ckadm@ubuntu:~/lxc$ ./autogen.sh

The configure command was adjusted to use the exact same paths as the LXC package from the Ubuntu repositories would use:

ckadm@ubuntu:~/lxc$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --libexecdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --with-rootfs-path=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lxc --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --with-config-path=/var/lib/lxc --enable-python --enable-doc --disable-rpath --enable-apparmor --enable-selinux --disable-lua --enable-tests --enable-cgmanager --enable-capabilities --with-distro=ubuntu

make will compile the source code and create the binaries:

ckadm@ubuntu:~/lxc$ make

And make install will place the binaries into the right places (= paths):

ckadm@ubuntu:~/lxc$ sudo make install

Important note: You still need to do other preparations (e.g. create a virtual bridge) before you can launch your containers.

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