How to initialize LXD again

LXD is the pure-container hypervisor that is pre-installed in Ubuntu 16.04 (or newer) and also available in other GNU/Linux distributions.

When you first configure LXD, you need to make important decisions. Decisions that relate to where you are storing the containers, how big that space will be and also how to set up networking.

In this post we are going to see how to properly clean up LXD with the aim to initialize it again (lxd init).

If you haven’t used LXD at all, have a look at how to set up LXD on your desktop and come back in order to reinitialize together.

Before initializing again, let’s have a look as to what is going on on our system.

What LXD packages have we got installed?

LXD comes in two packages, the lxd package for the hypervisor and the lxd-client for the client utility. There is an extra package, lxd-tools, however this one is not essential at all.

Let’s check which versions we have installed.

$ apt policy lxd lxd-client
lxd:
  Installed: 2.0.9-0ubuntu1~16.04.2
  Candidate: 2.0.9-0ubuntu1~16.04.2
  Version table:
 *** 2.0.9-0ubuntu1~16.04.2 500
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.0.2-0ubuntu1~16.04.1 500
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security/main amd64 Packages
     2.0.0-0ubuntu4 500
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
lxd-client:
  Installed: 2.0.9-0ubuntu1~16.04.2
  Candidate: 2.0.9-0ubuntu1~16.04.2
  Version table:
 *** 2.0.9-0ubuntu1~16.04.2 500
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.0.2-0ubuntu1~16.04.1 500
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security/main amd64 Packages
     2.0.0-0ubuntu4 500
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
$ _

I am running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, currently updated to 16.04.2. The current version of the LXD package is 2.0.9-0ubuntu1~16.04.2. You can see that there is an older version, which was a security update. And an even older version, version 2.0.0, which was the initial version that Ubuntu 16.04 was released with.

There is a PPA that has even more recent versions of LXD (currently at version 2.11), however as it is shown above, we do not have that one enabled here.

We will be uninstalling in a bit those two packages. There is an option to simply uninstall but also to uninstall with –purge. We need to figure out what LXD means in terms of installed files, in order to select whether to purge or not.

How are the containers stored and where are they located?

The containers can be stored either

  1. in subdirectories on the root (/) filesystem. Located at /var/lib/lxd/containers/ You get this when you configure LXD to use the dir storage backend.
  2. in a loop file that is formatted internally with the ZFS filesystem. Located at /var/lib/lxd/containers/zfs.img (or /var/lib/lxd/containers/disks/ in newer versions). You get this when you configure LXD to use the zfs storage backend (on a loop file and not a block device).
  3. in a block device (partition) that is formatted with ZFS (or btrfs). You get this when you configure LXD to use the zfs storage backend (not on a loop file but on a block device).

Let’s see all three cases!

In the following we assume we have a container called mytest, which is running.

$ lxc list
+--------+---------+----------------------+------+------------+-----------+
|  NAME  |  STATE  |         IPV4         | IPV6 |    TYPE    | SNAPSHOTS |
+--------+---------+----------------------+------+------------+-----------+
| mytest | RUNNING | 10.177.65.166 (eth0) |      | PERSISTENT | 0         |
+--------+---------+----------------------+------+------------+-----------+

Let’s see how it looks depending on the type of the storage backend.

Storage backend: dir

Let’s see the config!

$ lxc config show
config: {}
$ _

We are looking for configuration that refers to storage. We do not see any, therefore, this installation uses the dir storage backend.

Where are the files for the mytest container stored?

$ sudo ls -l /var/lib/lxd/containers/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x+ 4 165536 165536 4096 Μάρ  15 23:28 mytest
$ sudo ls -l /var/lib/lxd/containers/mytest/
total 12
-rw-r--r--  1 root   root   1566 Μάρ   8 05:16 metadata.yaml
drwxr-xr-x 22 165536 165536 4096 Μάρ  15 23:28 rootfs
drwxr-xr-x  2 root   root   4096 Μάρ   8 05:16 templates
$ _

Each container can be find in /var/lib/lxd/containers/, in a subdirectory with the same name as the container name.

Inside there, in the rootfs/ directory we can find the filesystem of the container.

Storage backend: zfs

Let’s see how the config looks like!

$ lxc config show
config:
  storage.zfs_pool_name: lxd
$

Okay, we are using ZFS for the storage backend. It is not clear yet whether we are using a loop file or a block device. How do we find that? With zpool status.

$ sudo zpool status
  pool: lxd
 state: ONLINE
  scan: none requested
config:

    NAME                    STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    lxd                     ONLINE       0     0     0
      /var/lib/lxd/zfs.img  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

In the above example, the ZFS filesystem is stored in a loop file, located at /var/lib/lxd/zfs.img

However, in the following example,

$ sudo zpool status
  pool: lxd
 state: ONLINE
  scan: none requested
config:

    NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    lxd         ONLINE       0     0     0
      sda8      ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

the ZFS filesystem is located in a block device, in /dev/sda8.

Here is how the container files look like with ZFS (either on a loop file or on a block device),

$ sudo ls -l /var/lib/lxd/containers/
total 5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root     34 Mar 15 23:43 mytest -> /var/lib/lxd/containers/mytest.zfs
drwxr-xr-x 4 165536 165536    5 Mar 15 23:43 mytest.zfs
$ sudo ls -l /var/lib/lxd/containers/mytest/
total 4
-rw-r--r--  1 root   root   1566 Mar  8 05:16 metadata.yaml
drwxr-xr-x 22 165536 165536   22 Mar 15 23:43 rootfs
drwxr-xr-x  2 root   root      8 Mar  8 05:16 templates
$ mount | grep mytest.zfs
lxd/containers/mytest on /var/lib/lxd/containers/mytest.zfs type zfs (rw,relatime,xattr,noacl)
$ _

How to clean up the storage backend

When we try to run lxd init without cleaning up our storage, we get the following error,

$ lxd init
LXD init cannot be used at this time.
+However if all you want to do is reconfigure the network,
+you can still do so by running "sudo dpkg-reconfigure -p medium lxd"

error: You have existing containers or images. lxd init requires an empty LXD.
$ _

Yep, we need to clean up both the containers and any cached images.

Cleaning up the containers

We are going to list the containers, then stop them, and finally delete them. Until the list is empty.

$ lxc list
+--------+---------+----------------------+------+------------+-----------+
|  NAME  |  STATE  |         IPV4         | IPV6 |    TYPE    | SNAPSHOTS |
+--------+---------+----------------------+------+------------+-----------+
| mytest | RUNNING | 10.177.65.205 (eth0) |      | PERSISTENT | 0         |
+--------+---------+----------------------+------+------------+-----------+
$ lxc stop mytest
$ lxc delete mytest
$ lxc list
+------+-------+------+------+------+-----------+
| NAME | STATE | IPV4 | IPV6 | TYPE | SNAPSHOTS |
+------+-------+------+------+------+-----------+
$ _

It’s empty now!

Cleaning up the images

We are going to list the cached images, then delete them. Until the list is empty!

$ lxc image list
+-------+--------------+--------+---------------------------------------------+--------+----------+-------------------------------+
| ALIAS | FINGERPRINT  | PUBLIC |                 DESCRIPTION                 |  ARCH  |   SIZE   |          UPLOAD DATE          |
+-------+--------------+--------+---------------------------------------------+--------+----------+-------------------------------+
|       | 2cab90c0c342 | no     | ubuntu 16.04 LTS amd64 (release) (20170307) | x86_64 | 146.32MB | Mar 15, 2017 at 10:02pm (UTC) |
+-------+--------------+--------+---------------------------------------------+--------+----------+-------------------------------+
$ lxc image delete 2cab90c0c342
$ lxc image list
+-------+-------------+--------+-------------+------+------+-------------+
| ALIAS | FINGERPRINT | PUBLIC | DESCRIPTION | ARCH | SIZE | UPLOAD DATE |
+-------+-------------+--------+-------------+------+------+-------------+
$ _

Clearing up the ZFS storage

If we are using ZFS, here is how we clear up the ZFS pool.

First, we need to remove any reference of the ZFS pool from LXD. We just need to unset the configuration directive storage.zfs_pool_name.

$ lxc config show
config:
  storage.zfs_pool_name: lxd
$ lxc config unset storage.zfs_pool_name
$ lxc config show
config: {}
$ _

Then, we can destroy the ZFS pool.

$ sudo zpool list
NAME   SIZE  ALLOC   FREE  EXPANDSZ   FRAG    CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
lxd   2,78G   664K  2,78G         -     7%     0%  1.00x  ONLINE  -
$ sudo zfs list
NAME             USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
lxd              544K  2,69G    19K  none
lxd/containers    19K  2,69G    19K  none
lxd/images        19K  2,69G    19K  none
$ sudo zpool destroy lxd
$ sudo zpool list
no pools available
$ sudo zfs list
no datasets available
$ _

Running “lxd init” again

At this point we are able to run lxd init again in order to initialize LXD again.

Common errors

Here is a collection of errors that I encountered when running lxd init. These errors should appear if we did not clean up properly as described earlier in this post.

I had been trying lots of variations, including different versions of LXD. You probably need to try hard to get these errors.

error: Provided ZFS pool (or dataset) isn’t empty

Here is how it looks:

$ sudo lxd init
Name of the storage backend to use (dir or zfs) [default=zfs]: zfs
Create a new ZFS pool (yes/no) [default=yes]? no
Name of the existing ZFS pool or dataset: lxd
Would you like LXD to be available over the network (yes/no) [default=no]? no
Do you want to configure the LXD bridge (yes/no) [default=yes]? no
error: Provided ZFS pool (or dataset) isn't empty
Exit 1

Whaaaat??? Something is wrong. The ZFS pool is not empty? What’s inside the ZFS pool?

$ sudo zfs list
NAME             USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
lxd              642K  14,4G    19K  none
lxd/containers    19K  14,4G    19K  none
lxd/images        19K  14,4G    19K  none

Okay, it’s just the two volumes that are left over. Let’s erase them!

$ sudo zfs destroy lxd/containers
$ sudo zfs destroy lxd/images
$ sudo zfs list
NAME   USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
lxd    349K  14,4G    19K  none
$ _

Nice! Let’s run now lxd init.

$ sudo lxd init
Name of the storage backend to use (dir or zfs) [default=zfs]: zfs
Create a new ZFS pool (yes/no) [default=yes]? no
Name of the existing ZFS pool or dataset: lxd
Would you like LXD to be available over the network (yes/no) [default=no]? no
Do you want to configure the LXD bridge (yes/no) [default=yes]? yes
Warning: Stopping lxd.service, but it can still be activated by:
  lxd.socket
LXD has been successfully configured.
$ _

That’s it! LXD is freshly configured!

error: Failed to create the ZFS pool: cannot create ‘lxd’: pool already exists

Here is how it looks,

$ sudo lxd init
Name of the storage backend to use (dir or zfs) [default=zfs]: 
Create a new ZFS pool (yes/no) [default=yes]? 
Name of the new ZFS pool [default=lxd]: 
Would you like to use an existing block device (yes/no) [default=no]? yes
Path to the existing block device: /dev/sdb9 
Would you like LXD to be available over the network (yes/no) [default=no]? 
Do you want to configure the LXD bridge (yes/no) [default=yes]? 
error: Failed to create the ZFS pool: cannot create 'lxd': pool already exists
$ _

Here we forgot to destroy the ZFS pool called lxd. See earlier in this post on how to destroy the pool so that lxd init can recreate it.

Permission denied, are you in the lxd group?

This is a common error when you first install the lxd package because your non-root account needs to log out and log in again in order to enable the membership to the lxd Unix group.

However, we got this error when we were casually uninstalling and reinstalling the lxd package, and doing nasty tests. Let’s see more details.

$ lxc list
Permission denied, are you in the lxd group?
Exit 1
$ groups myusername
myusername : myusername adm cdrom sudo plugdev lpadmin lxd
$ newgrp lxd
$ lxc list
Permission denied, are you in the lxd group?
Exit 1
$ _

Whaaat!?! Permission denied and we are asked whether we are in the lxd group? We are members of the lxd group!

Well, the problem is whether the Unix socket that allows non-root users (members of the lxd Unix group) to access LXD has proper ownership.

$ ls -l /var/lib/lxd/unix.socket 
srw-rw---- 1 root root 0 Mar 15 23:20 /var/lib/lxd/unix.socket
$ sudo chown :lxd /var/lib/lxd/unix.socket 
$ ls -l /var/lib/lxd/unix.socket 
srw-rw---- 1 root lxd 0 Mar 15 23:20 /var/lib/lxd/unix.socket
$ lxc list
+------+-------+------+------+------+-----------+
| NAME | STATE | IPV4 | IPV6 | TYPE | SNAPSHOTS |
+------+-------+------+------+------+-----------+
$ _

The group of the Unix socket /var/lib/lxd/unix.socket was not set to the proper value lxd, therefore we set it ourselves. And then the LXD commands work just fine with our non-root user account!

error: Error checking if a pool is already in use: Failed to list ZFS filesystems: cannot open ‘lxd’: dataset does not exist

Here is a tricky error.

$ sudo lxd init
Name of the storage backend to use (dir or zfs) [default=zfs]: 
Create a new ZFS pool (yes/no) [default=yes]? 
Name of the new ZFS pool [default=lxd]: lxd2
Would you like to use an existing block device (yes/no) [default=no]? 
Size in GB of the new loop device (1GB minimum) [default=15]: 
Would you like LXD to be available over the network (yes/no) [default=no]? 
Do you want to configure the LXD bridge (yes/no) [default=yes]? 
error: Error checking if a pool is already in use: Failed to list ZFS filesystems: cannot open 'lxd': dataset does not exist
$ _

We cleaned up the ZFS pool just fine and we are running lxd init. But we got an error relating to the lxd pool that is already gone. Whaat?!?

What happened is that in this case, we forgot to FIRST unset the configuration option in LXD regarding the ZFS pool. We just forget to run lxc config unset storage.zfs_pool_name.

It’s fine then, let’s unset it now and go on with life.

$ lxc config unset storage.zfs_pool_name
error: Error checking if a pool is already in use: Failed to list ZFS filesystems: cannot open 'lxd': dataset does not exist
Exit 1
$ _

Alright, we really messed up!

There are two ways to move forward. One, to rm -fr /var/lib/lxd/ and start over.

The other way is to edit the /var/lib/lxd/lxd.db Sqlite3 file and change the configuration setting from there. Here is how it works,

First, install the sqlitebrowser package and run sudo sqlitebrowser /var/lib/lxd/lxd.db

Second, get to the config table in sqlitebrowser as shown below.

Third, double-click on the value field (which as shown, says lxd) and clear it so it is shown as empty.

Fourth, click on File→Close Database and select to save the database. Let’s see now!

$ lxc config show
config:
  storage.zfs_pool_name: lxd

What?

Fifth, we need to start the LXD service so that LXD will read again the configuration.

$ sudo systemctl restart lxd.service
$ lxc config show
config: {}
$ _

That’s it! We are good to go!

Permanent link to this article: https://blog.simos.info/how-to-initialize-lxd-again/

9 comments

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    • Pujo on June 7, 2017 at 10:46
    • Reply

    Hi..
    For example, I have lxd with zfs running on system A. If system A crash/get hardware failure, can I move zfs pool from system A to a new system B and get lxd run using that zfs pool and continue all container in it? Thanks.

    1. The full state of a LXD installation is stored in /var/lib/lxd.

      Specifically, /var/lib/lxd/lxd.db is an SQLite database with information about each container along with the information about the storage pool (ZFS).

      The easy way would be to
      1. stop the LXD service on A
      2. stop the (empty) LXD server on B
      3. copy over /var/lib/lxd/ from A to the same location on B.
      4. start the LXD service on B.

      If you need to make individual changes, you may edit /var/lib/lxd/lxd.db using the program “sqlitebrowser”.

    • Pujo on June 8, 2017 at 02:57
    • Reply

    Hi Simos,

    Thanks for the answer.

    • Andrey Kalmykov on March 13, 2018 at 07:10
    • Reply

    Hello Simos,
    Thank you for a great article!
    Very useful

  1. Hi Simos, thanks for your work. This article was usefull for me.

    • Robert Koretsky on September 20, 2020 at 14:20
    • Reply

    Excellent article, thanks! Trying to do this on Ubuntu 20.04 server, will give you a report on success or modifications necessary.

    1. Thanks!
      This article was written for LXD 2.0 and now we have LXD 4.x, also snap packages.
      The big issue with removing the snap package, is that the snapd service will try by default to backup your data. So, you need extra effort to expunge any containers that need to go.

    2. This post is one of my oldest. It was about LXD 2.0!

  2. is there an updated post?

  1. […] References: [1]How to initialize LXD again […]

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