Web development in LXC / LXD containers on Ubuntu

Here is how to do web development using the very fast Ubuntu native LXC/LXD containers. Part of the Practical Ubuntu Linux Server for beginners course.

First lets install lxd in our system:
sudo snap install lxd

Then initialize the basic environment:
sudo lxd init

We will also fetch image from a repository: linuxcontainers.org

and will start a container based on it:
sudo lxc launch images:alpine/3.10/amd64 webdevelopment

Let's see what we have in the system:
sudo lxc ls
sudo lxc storage ls
sudo lxc network ls

Now it is time to access the container with: sudo lxc exec webdevelopment sh
and then we will use apk to install openssh
apk add openssh-server
lets' also add unprivileged user in order to access the ssh:
adduser webdev
we will also start the server: 

service sshd start

Ok let's check with: ip a the address of the container.

Now we exit the shell(sh) and we can connect to the container using our new user: ssh webdev@ip address of container

Alright, now go back inside the container and will add the Apache service:
apk add apache2
service apache2 restart

Optional:

If we need to get rid of the container we need to stop it first:
sudo lxc stop demo
sudo lxc delete demo

If we need to get rid of the created storage pool, we run the following:
printf 'config: {}\ndevices: {}' | lxc profile edit default
lxc storage delete default

If we need to remove the created network bridge we can run:
sudo lxc network delete lxdbr0

Congratulations and happy learning !

Skaffold on microk8s kubernettes

Here is how to install configure and use microk8s with skaffold, step by step. Based on the Kubernetes course:

installation:

curl -Lo skaffold https://storage.googleapis.com/skaffold/releases/latest/skaffold-linux-amd64 && sudo install skaffold /usr/local/bin/

create the initial project skaffold configuration:

skaffold init 

create alias to kubectl for skaffold to be able to use it :  

sudo snap alias microk8s.kubectl kubectl

provide microk8s config to skaffold:

microk8s.kubectl config view --raw > $HOME/.kube/config

update the pod configuration to use the image from microk8s:

image: localhost:32000/php-app 

(add localhost:32000...)

enable microk8s registry addon: 

microk8s.enable registry
then test the registry if it works: http://localhost:32000/v2/

run skaffold monitoring by providing repo to the insecure microk8s repo:

skaffold dev --default-repo=localhost:32000
Check if the pod is running:

kubectl get pods

Expose the pod ports to be browsable:

kubectl port-forward pod/skaffold-pod 8080:4000

Optional: In case we need to debug inside the container:   

docker run -ti localhost:32000/php-app:latest /bin/bash

Congratulations and enjoy the course !