Editing Installation on Debian

This document briefly describes the steps needed to install OpenVZ on your Debian 7 "Wheezy" machine. For RHEL/Centos 6 based systems, please see [[Quick installation]].

{{Out|A commercial version of OpenVZ is available, which simplifies installation with a single disk as well as supports networked installation using PXE boot. To learn more about Parallels Cloud Server and request a free trial, please see http://www.parallels.com/products/pcs/}}

== Requirements ==

This guide assumes you are running '''Debian 7 "Wheezy" ''' for '''AMD64''' or '''i686'''.

=== /vz file system ===

It is recommended to use a separate partition for containers (by default '''/var/lib/vz''') and format it to '''ext4'''.

=== apt pre-setup ===

{{Note|For more info about Debian repositories, see http://download.openvz.org/debian.}}

Run the following:

<pre><nowiki>cat << EOF > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/openvz-rhel6.list
deb http://download.openvz.org/debian wheezy main
# deb http://download.openvz.org/debian wheezy-test main
EOF</nowiki></pre>

{{Note|The second line with wheezy-test is commented out. This is a testing repo with newer kernels and possibly tools. Enable it if you want to stay on a bleeding edge of technology.}}

Import GPG key used for signing repository:

<pre><nowiki>wget ftp://ftp.openvz.org/debian/archive.key
apt-key add archive.key</nowiki></pre>

Update the local cache:
 apt-get update

== Kernel installation ==

Limited OpenVZ functionality is supported when you run a recent 3.x kernel (check [[vzctl for upstream kernel]]), so OpenVZ kernel installation is optional but still highly recommended.

 # apt-get install linux-image-openvz-amd64

Or, if you still have i686:

 # apt-get install linux-image-openvz-686

== System configuration ==

<!-- this is not yet in vzctl.deb 
{{Note|With vzctl 4.6 or newer there is no need to do manual configuration. Skip to [[#Tools_installation]].}}
-->

Please make sure the following steps are performed before rebooting into OpenVZ kernel.

=== sysctl ===

There are a number of kernel parameters that should be set for OpenVZ to work correctly. These parameters are stored in <tt>/etc/sysctl.conf</tt> file. Here are the relevant portions of the file; please edit accordingly.

<pre>
# On Hardware Node we generally need
# packet forwarding enabled and proxy arp disabled
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.forwarding = 1
net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding = 1
net.ipv4.conf.default.proxy_arp = 0

# Enables source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1

# Enables the magic-sysrq key
kernel.sysrq = 1

# We do not want all our interfaces to send redirects
net.ipv4.conf.default.send_redirects = 1
net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects = 0
</pre>

== Tools installation ==

{{Out|Before installing tools, please read about [[vzstats]] and opt-out if you don't want to help the project.}}

OpenVZ needs some user-level tools installed:

 # apt-get install vzctl vzquota ploop vzstats

== Reboot into OpenVZ kernel ==

Now reboot the machine and choose an entry with word "openvz" in the boot loader menu (it should be default choice).

== Download OS templates ==

{{Note|this step is optional, vzctl is able to download templates on demand.}}

An OS template is a Linux distribution installed into a container
and then packed into a gzipped tarball. Using such a cache, a new container
can be created in a minute.

Download precreated template caches from [http://openvz.org/download/template/cache Downloads » Templates » Precreated], or directly from [http://download.openvz.org/template/precreated/ download.openvz.org/template/precreated], or from one of the [[Download mirrors|mirrors]]. Put those tarballs '''as-is (no unpacking needed)''' to the <tt>/vz/template/cache/</tt> directory.

== Next steps ==

OpenVZ is now set up on your machine. Follow on to [[basic operations in OpenVZ environment]] document.

[[Category: Installation]]
[[Category: HOWTO]]
[[Category: Debian]]