Incus is a modern, secure and powerful system container and virtual machine manager.
The launch of the first version of the Incus project, which one we already talked here on the blog and in order not to go into too many details I can tell you here briefly that it is a fork of the LXD container management system, created by the old development team that once created LXD.
Regarding the launch of the first version of Incus, it is worth mentioning that follows LXD 5.18 l updatelaunched recently and focuses mainly in renaming and reorganizing the code base, as well as removing obsolete functions. At the same time, the new version also includes Incus-specific changes to the command line interface and API, which could not be included in LXD due to backward compatibility requirements.
What new features does the first version of Incus present?
In this first release of the project, apart from what was already mentioned above about the internal changes related to the name and so on, in the device /dev/lxd has been replaced by /dev/incus, references to lxd in the code have been replaced by incus.Deprecated *Container functions were removed from the API, which were replaced by *Instance functions after the implementation of virtual machine management.
This first version of Incus highlights that a transition to Cowsql integrated SQL engine, which is compatible with SQLite, supports data replication, automatic failover, and provides fault tolerance by distributing drivers across multiple nodes.
In addition to this, there have been changes to internal commands, since the following commands have been added to the command line interface to manage snapshots for the execution of operations: incus snapshot create, incus snapshot delete, incus snapshot list, incus snapshot rename and incus snapshot restore.
Another change that stands out is that added lxd-to-incus utility for LXD to Incus migration (Automatic conversion of configuration files is supported from LXD 4.0 to 5.18.) Cluster migration is not yet supported.
It is also noted that the type of server configuration items has been changed, as well as that the obsolete authentication method has been removed. core.trust_password which replaces token-based authentication.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- The deprecated API access points /1.0/containers and /1.0/virtual-machines have been removed and replaced with /1.0/instances.
- Version 1.20 is declared as the minimum supported version of the Go language.
- Within the Incus virtual machines, the provider is now configured on Linux Containers and the product is configured on Incus.
- The device virtio-serial used for limited communication with Incus before establishing full access to the agent via vsock is now org.linuxcontainers.incus.
Some features native to Ubuntu or that rely on outdated or unsupported software have been discontinued: - Removed support for Ubuntu Fan Links (bridge.mode, fan.overlay_subnet, fan.underlay_subnet, fan.type), which depend on kernel patches used only in Ubuntu.
- Removed FS shiftfs, supporting only packages with the Ubuntu kernel; a virtual FS to map mount points to user namespaces.
- Removed support for Canonical's specific Candid authentication system.
- Removed support for the proprietary implementation of the RBAC (Role Based Access Control) authentication mechanism created by Canonical based on Macaroons and Candid.
- Components removed for integration with MAAS (Metal-as-a-Service), a set of tools to quickly deploy Ubuntu configurations.
- Removed the concept of accessing the server using a trusted password (core.trust_password).
In the future, the developers plan to port useful improvements and fixes from the LXD codebase, and will also develop their original innovations, which Canonical will be able to port to LXD if it wishes. The Incus project also plans to address some conceptual errors made during the development of LXD that previously could not be fixed without breaking backwards compatibility.
finally if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details In the following link.