lxc-attach(1)lxc-attach(1)NAMElxc-attach - start a process inside a running container.
SYNOPSISlxc-attach {-n name} [-a arch] [-e] [-s namespaces] [-R] [--keep-env]
[--clear-env] [-- command]
DESCRIPTIONlxc-attach runs the specified command inside the container specified by
name. The container has to be running already.
If no command is specified, the current default shell of the user run‐
ning lxc-attach will be looked up inside the container and executed.
This will fail if no such user exists inside the container or the con‐
tainer does not have a working nsswitch mechanism.
OPTIONS-a, --arch arch
Specify the architecture which the kernel should appear to be
running as to the command executed. This option will accept the
same settings as the lxc.arch option in container configuration
files, see lxc.conf(5). By default, the current archictecture of
the running container will be used.
-e, --elevated-privileges
Do not drop privileges when running command inside the contain‐
er. If this option is specified, the new process will not be
added to the container's cgroup(s) and it will not drop its ca‐
pabilities before executing.
Warning: This may leak privileges into the container if the com‐
mand starts subprocesses that remain active after the main
process that was attached is terminated. The (re-)starting of
daemons inside the container is problematic, especially if the
daemon starts a lot of subprocesses such as cron or sshd. Use
with great care.
-s, --namespaces namespaces
Specify the namespaces to attach to, as a pipe-separated list,
e.g. NETWORK|IPC. Allowed values are MOUNT, PID, UTSNAME, IPC,
USER and NETWORK. This allows one to change the context of the
process to e.g. the network namespace of the container while re‐
taining the other namespaces as those of the host.
Important: This option implies -e.
-R, --remount-sys-proc
When using -s and the mount namespace is not included, this flag
will cause lxc-attach to remount /proc and /sys to reflect the
current other namespace contexts.
Please see the Notes section for more details.
This option will be ignored if one tries to attach to the mount
namespace anyway.
--keep-env
Keep the current environment for attached programs. This is the
current default behaviour (as of version 0.9), but is is likely
to change in the future, since this may leak undesirable infor‐
mation into the container. If you rely on the environment being
available for the attached program, please use this option to be
future-proof. In addition to current environment variables, con‐
tainer=lxc will be set.
--clear-env
Clear the environment before attaching, so no undesired environ‐
ment variables leak into the container. The variable contain‐
er=lxc will be the only environment with which the attached pro‐
gram starts.
COMMON OPTIONS
These options are common to most of lxc commands.
-?, -h, --help
Print a longer usage message than normal.
--usage
Give the usage message
-q, --quiet
mute on
-P, --lxcpath=PATH
Use an alternate container path. The default is /var/lib/lxc.
-o, --logfile=FILE
Output to an alternate log FILE. The default is no log.
-l, --logpriority=LEVEL
Set log priority to LEVEL. The default log priority is ERROR.
Possible values are : FATAL, CRIT, WARN, ERROR, NOTICE, INFO,
DEBUG.
Note that this option is setting the priority of the events log
in the alternate log file. It do not have effect on the ERROR
events log on stderr.
-n, --name=NAME
Use container identifier NAME. The container identifier format
is an alphanumeric string.
EXAMPLES
To spawn a new shell running inside an existing container, use
lxc-attach-n container
To restart the cron service of a running Debian container, use
lxc-attach-n container -- /etc/init.d/cron restart
To deactivate the network link eth1 of a running container that does
not have the NET_ADMIN capability, use either the -e option to use in‐
creased capabilities, assuming the ip tool is installed:
lxc-attach-n container -e -- /sbin/ip link delete eth1
Or, alternatively, use the -s to use the tools installed on the host
outside the container:
lxc-attach-n container -s NETWORK -- /sbin/ip link delete eth1
COMPATIBILITY
Attaching completely (including the pid and mount namespaces) to a con‐
tainer requires a patched kernel, please see the lxc website for de‐
tails. lxc-attach will fail in that case if used with an unpatched ker‐
nel.
Nevertheless, it will succeed on an unpatched kernel of version 3.0 or
higher if the -s option is used to restrict the namespaces that the
process is to be attached to to one or more of NETWORK, IPC and UT‐
SNAME.
Attaching to user namespaces is currently completely unsupported by the
kernel. lxc-attach should however be able to do this once once future
kernel versions implement this.
NOTES
The Linux /proc and /sys filesystems contain information about some
quantities that are affected by namespaces, such as the directories
named after process ids in /proc or the network interface infromation
in /sys/class/net. The namespace of the process mounting the pseudo-
filesystems determines what information is shown, not the namespace of
the process accessing /proc or /sys.
If one uses the -s option to only attach to the pid namespace of a con‐
tainer, but not its mount namespace (which will contain the /proc of
the container and not the host), the contents of /proc will reflect
that of the host and not the container. Analogously, the same issue oc‐
curs when reading the contents of /sys/class/net and attaching to just
the network namespace.
To work around this problem, the -R flag provides the option to remount
/proc and /sys in order for them to reflect the network/pid namespace
context of the attached process. In order not to interfere with the
host's actual filesystem, the mount namespace will be unshared (like
lxc-unshare does) before this is done, esentially giving the process a
new mount namespace, which is identical to the hosts's mount namespace
except for the /proc and /sys filesystems.
SECURITY
The -e and -s options should be used with care, as it may break the
isolation of the containers if used improperly.
SEE ALSOlxc(1), lxc-create(1), lxc-destroy(1), lxc-start(1), lxc-stop(1), lxc-
execute(1), lxc-kill(1), lxc-console(1), lxc-monitor(1), lxc-wait(1),
lxc-cgroup(1), lxc-ls(1), lxc-ps(1), lxc-info(1), lxc-freeze(1), lxc-
unfreeze(1), lxc-attach(1), lxc.conf(5)AUTHOR
Daniel Lezcano <daniel.lezcano@free.fr>
Tue Jul 9 14:17:14 CDT 2013 lxc-attach(1)
