Container image

Container image is generally used to export/import containers from/to vpsAdminOS nodes.

Structure

The image archive must contain the following files:

.
├── metadata.yml
├── config/
│   ├── user.yml
│   ├── group.yml
│   └── container.yml
├── rootfs/
│   ├── base.dat[.gz] | base.tar.gz
│   ├── [incremental.dat[.gz]]
│   └── [subdataset]
│       ├── base.dat[.gz]
│       └── [incremental.dat[.gz]]
├── [hooks/]
│   └── <hook>
└── snapshots.yml

metadata.yml describes the archive, see below.

config/ contains osctld config files for the container and its user and group, the same files you can find in $pool/conf.

rootfs/ contains rootfs in the form of ZFS data streams or as a tar archive, depending on format in metadata.yml.

For ZFS, base.dat is a full stream. If the export was consistent, incremental.dat contains an incremental stream from base.dat. Subdatasets are exported to subdirectories with the dataset's relative name.

When the rootfs is exported as a tar archive in base.tar.gz, there can be no subdatasets, everything is in that one archive. This is used when exporting containers from other virtualization technologies into vpsAdminOS.

The archive is intentionally uncompressed, as the text files are neglidible next to the rootfs. Actually, it wouldn't be possible to create a compressed tar from ZFS stream on the fly, because we don't know the stream's size beforehand. The ZFS streams can be dumped in a raw form, or they can be compressed using gzip, in that case .gz suffix is appended.

Directory hooks can contain user-defined script hooks that are run by osctld when the container is started or stopped. This directory is optional. See man osctl(8) for a list of supported script hooks.

snapshots.yml is a list of ZFS snapshots that have been taken to generate ZFS streams stored at rootfs/. This is a convenience for when the archive is being imported, so that osctld can remove the snapshots after they have been received.

metadata.yml

metadata.yml is a hash with the following data:

---
type: full | skel
format: zfs | tar
user: <user name>
group: <group name>
container: <container id>
datasets: <list of container subdatasets>
exported_at: <timestamp>