Appendix A - workstation setup¶

While not part of the chapters for an Incus Server, this procedure will help those who want to have a lab environment or semi-permanent OS and application running on a Rocky Linux workstation or notebook.

Prerequisites¶

comfortable at the command line
able to use a command line editor, such as vi or nano fluently
a need for a stable testing environment used every day or as needed
able to become root or have sudo privileges

Installation¶

From the command line, install the EPEL repository:

sudo dnf install epel-release -y

When the installation finishes, do an upgrade:

sudo dnf upgrade

Install other repositories:

sudo dnf config-manager --enable crb
sudo dnf copr enable neil/incus

Install some needed packages:

sudo dnf install dkms vim kernel-devel bash-completion

Install and enable Incus:

sudo dnf install incus incus-tools
sudo systemctl enable incus

Please reboot your notebook or workstation before you continue.

Incus initialization¶

If you have looked through the production server chapters, this is nearly identical to the production server initialization procedure.

sudo incus admin init

This will start a question-and-answer dialog.

Here are the questions and our answers for the script, with a little explanation where warranted:

Would you like to use clustering? (yes/no) [default=no]: no
Do you want to configure a new storage pool? (yes/no) [default=yes]: yes
Name of the new storage pool [default=default]: storage

Optionally, you can accept the default.

Name of the storage backend to use (btrfs, dir, lvm, ceph) [default=btrfs]: dir

Note that dir is somewhat slower than zfs. If you can leave a disk empty, you can use that device (example: /dev/sdb) for the zfs device and then select zfs.

Would you like to connect to a MAAS server? (yes/no) [default=no]:

Metal As A Service (MAAS) is outside the scope of this document.

Would you like to create a new local network bridge? (yes/no) [default=yes]:
What should the new bridge be called? [default=incusbr0]: 
What IPv4 address should be used? (CIDR subnet notation, “auto” or “none”) [default=auto]:
What IPv6 address should be used? (CIDR subnet notation, “auto” or “none”) [default=auto]: none

You can turn on this option if you want to use IPv6 on your Incus containers.

Would you like the Incus server to be available over the network? (yes/no) [default=no]: yes

This is necessary to snapshot the workstation. Answer "yes" here.

Address to bind Incus to (not including port) [default=all]:
Port to bind Incus to [default=8443]:
Trust password for new clients:
Again:

This trust password is how you will connect to or back from the snapshot server. Set it with something that makes sense in your environment. Save this entry to a secure location, such as a password manager.

Would you like stale cached images to be updated automatically? (yes/no) [default=yes]
Would you like a YAML "incus admin init" preseed to be printed? (yes/no) [default=no]:

User privileges¶

The next thing you need to do is to add your user to the incus-admin group. Again, you will need to use sudo or be root for this:

sudo usermod -a -G incus-admin [username]

Where [username] is your user on the system.

Setting `subuid` and `subgid` values for `root`¶

You must set both the value of the root user's subuid and subgid (the range of subordinate user and group IDs). This value should be:

root:1000000:1000000000

To do this, edit the /etc/subuid and add that line. When completed, your file will be:

root:1000000:1000000000

Add that line again to the /etc/subgid file. Your file will look something like this:

incusadmin:100000:65536
root:1000000:1000000000

You have made a number of changes at this point. Before you proceed, reboot your machine.

Verifying the install¶

To ensure that incus started and that your user has privileges, from the shell prompt do:

incus list

Note you have not used sudo here. Your user can enter these commands. You will see something like this:

+------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+
|    NAME    |  STATE  |         IPV4         | IPV6 |   TYPE    | SNAPSHOTS |
+------------+---------+----------------------+------+-----------+-----------+

If you do, you are looking good!

The rest of it¶

From this point, you can use the chapters from our "Incus Production Server" to continue. There are some things on a workstation setup that you need to pay less attention to. Here are the recommended chapters to get you going:

Conclusion¶

Incus is a powerful tool for increased productivity on workstations or servers. It is great for lab testing on a workstation and can also keep semi-permanent instances of operating systems and applications available in their own private space.

Author: Steven Spencer

Contributors: Ganna Zhyrnova