Introduction

The Linux Containers project maintains Long Term Support (LTS) releases for its core projects. Those come with 5 years of support from upstream with the first two years including bugfixes, minor improvements and security fixes and the remaining 3 years getting only security fixes.

This is now the third round of bugfix releases for LXC, LXCFS and Incus 6.0 LTS.

LXC

LXC is the oldest Linux Containers project and the basis for almost every other one of our projects. This low-level container runtime and library was first released in August 2008, led to the creation of projects like Docker and today is still actively used directly or indirectly on millions of systems.

Announcement: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/lxc-6-0-3-lts-has-been-released/22402

Highlights of this point release:

• Added support for PuzzleFS images in lxc-oci
• SIGHUP is now propagated through lxc.init
• Reworked testsuite including support for 64-bit Arm

LXCFS

LXCFS is a FUSE filesystem used to workaround some shortcomings of the Linux kernel when it comes to reporting available system resources to processes running in containers. The project started in late 2014 and is still actively used by Incus today as well as by some Docker and Kubernetes users.

Announcement: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/lxcfs-6-0-3-lts-has-been-released/22401

Highlights of this point release:

• Better detection of swap accounting support
• Reworked testsuite including support for 64-bit Arm

Incus

Incus is our most actively developed project. This virtualization platform is just over a year old but has already seen over 3500 commits by over 120 individual contributors. Its first LTS release made it usable in production environments and significantly boosted its user base.

Announcement: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/incus-6-0-3-lts-has-been-released/22403

Highlights of this point release:

• OS info for virtual machines (incus info)
• Console history for virtual machines (incus console --show-log)
• Ability to create clustered LVM pools directly through Incus
• QCOW2 and VMDK support in incus-migrate
• Configurable macvlan mode (bridge, vepa, passthru or private)
• Load-balancer health information (incus network load-balancer info)
• External interfaces in OVN networks (support for bridge.external_interfaces)
• Parallel cluster evacuation/restore (on systems with large number of CPUs)
• Introduction of incus webui as a quick way to access the web interface
• Automatic cluster re-balancing
• Partial instance/volume refresh (incus copy --refresh-exclude-older --refresh)
• Configurable columns, formatting and refresh time in incus top
• Support for DHCP ranges in OVN (ipv4.dhcp.ranges)
• Support for changing the backing interface of a managed physical network
• Extended QEMU scriptlet (additional functions)
• New log file for QEMU QMP traffic (qemu.qmp.log)
• New get_instances_count function available in placement scriptlet
• Support for --format in incus admin sql
• Storage live migration for virtual machines
• New authorization scriptlet as an alternative to OpenFGA
• API to retrieve console screenshots
• Configurable initial owner for custom storage volumes (initial.uid, initial.gid, initial.mode)
• Image alias reuse on import (incus image import --reuse --alias)
• New incus-simplestreams prune command
• Console access locking (incus console --force to override)

What’s next?

We’re expecting another LTS bugfix release for the 6.0 branches in the first quarter of 2025.
We’re also actively working on a new stable release (non-LTS) for LXCFS.
Incus will keep going with its usual monthly feature release cadence.

Thanks

This LTS release update was made possible thanks to funding provided by the Sovereign Tech Fund (now part of the Sovereign Tech Agency).

The Sovereign Tech Fund supports the development, improvement, and maintenance of open digital infrastructure. Its goal is to sustainably strengthen the open source ecosystem, focusing on security, resilience, technological diversity, and the people behind the code.

Find out more at: https://www.sovereign.tech

Introduction

The Linux Containers project maintains Long Term Support (LTS) releases for its core projects.
Those come with 5 years of support from upstream with the first two years including bugfixes, minor improvements and security fixes and the remaining 3 years getting only security fixes.

This is now the second round of bugfix releases for LXC, LXCFS and Incus 6.0 LTS.

LXC

LXC is the oldest Linux Containers project and the basis for almost every other one of our projects.
This low-level container runtime and library was first released in August 2008, led to the creation of projects like Docker and today is still actively used directly or indirectly on millions of systems.

Announcement: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/lxc-6-0-2-lts-has-been-released/21632

Highlights of this point release:

• Reduced log level on some common messages
• Fix compilation error on aarch64

LXCFS

LXCFS is a FUSE filesystem used to workaround some shortcomings of the Linux kernel when it comes to reporting available system resources to processes running in containers.
The project started in late 2014 and is still actively used by Incus today as well as by some Docker and Kubernetes users.

Announcement: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/lxcfs-6-0-2-lts-has-been-released/21631

Highlights of this point release:

• Fix building of LXCFS on musl systems (missing include)

Incus

Incus is our most actively developed project. This virtualization platform is just over a year old but has already seen over 3500 commits by over 120 individual contributors. Its first LTS release made it usable in production environments and significantly boosted its user base.

Announcement: https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/incus-6-0-2-lts-has-been-released/21633

Highlights of this point release:

• Completion of transition to native OVSDB for OVS/OVN
• Baseline CPU defintiion for clustered users
• Filesystem support for io.bus and io.cache
• CPU flags in server resources
• Unified image support in incus-simplestreams
• Completion of libovsdb transition
• Using a sub-path of a volume as a disk
• Per storage pool projects limits
• Isolated OVN networks (no uplink)
• Per-instance LXCFS
• Support for environment file at create/launch time
• Instance auto-restart
• Column selection in all list commands
• QMP command hooks and scriptlet
• Live disk resize support in virtual machines
• PCI devices hotplug
• OVN load-balancer health checks
• Promiscuous mode for OVN NICs
• Ability to run off IP allocation on OVN NICs
• Customizable OIDC scope request
• Configurable LVM PV metadata size
• Configurable OVS socket path

What’s next?

We’re expecting another LTS bugfix release for the 6.0 branches later this year.

On top of that, Q4 of 2024 will also feature non-LTS feature releases of both LXC and LXCFS as we’re trying to push out new releases of those two projects every 6 months now.

Incus will keep going with its usual monthly feature release cadence.