bluebluesodaandCommandCodeBot
01935f50a8
Two vpsmgr hosts that share nothing but a network can now hand a container's root disk over: `vps transfer send <user>` exports the stopped container to a single archive and serves it from a temporary listener, and `vps transfer receive <url> <user>` fetches it, verifies it, and rebuilds the container from it. It is what an operator needs to move a customer between two machines in different datacenters, where the existing snapshot sharing cannot reach: that feature is a copy-on-write clone inside one pool, so no byte ever leaves the host. Only the disk travels. Domains, SSH keys, quotas, expiry, bandwidth and resource history are configuration this host owns and deliberately keeps to itself -- the two hosts do not share admin keys -- so the receiving side re-homes the container onto its own address, ports and quota instead of adopting the sender's. Decisions worth recording: - The archive is an instance backup streamed with Accept: application/octet-stream, so Incus sends the tarball straight down the socket and nothing is staged in the storage pool first. Publishing an image would have been the cleaner artefact but it materialises the whole rootfs inside the pool, which fails on exactly the nearly-full hosts a migration tends to involve. - The transfer runs as root from the CLI and has no panel entry. It puts a user's disk on the network; no panel request should be able to do that. - The certificate pin and the archive checksum both ride in the URL fragment, which HTTP clients never transmit, so the pasted command carries the whole trust decision and the listener never learns either value. - An import parks the container it replaces under a temporary name and brings the new one into place only after it starts and provisions. A failure at any point puts the original back, rather than leaving the user with nothing. - The listener stops after five idle minutes and the archive is deleted on every exit path, including SIGINT/SIGHUP during the export itself. - lx: a deadline-free HTTP client for the transfer (the 60s cap would abort any real transfer), plus BackupExport/BackupImport/ReplaceConfig/DiskUsage - lx: ReplaceConfig replaces an imported container's configuration wholesale while carrying the daemon's volatile.* keys through unchanged - mgr: the export/import orchestration, including fresh machine-id and SSH host keys (a copied rootfs otherwise makes two hosts claim one identity) - mgr: a temporary HTTPS listener with one path, Range support for resuming a dropped download, and a stalled-connection guard - cli: `vps transfer send|receive`, live progress on both sides, space checked against the container's actual size before a long export starts - tests: pinning, checksum, resume, unknown-token, URL parsing, idle exit Co-authored-by: CommandCodeBot <noreply@commandcode.ai>
Vpsmgr Lite
A lightweight Incus container hosting panel for small VPS instances and low-memory hosts.
Security warning: The “VMs” created by this project are LXC containers, not virtual machines. Container isolation is weaker than KVM/QEMU. A container escape or kernel vulnerability could affect the host and other tenants. Do not run untrusted or high-security workloads on a shared host.
Feature Details
- Admin panel: users, quotas, domains, IPv6 pool, SSH public keys, and audit logs; supports logging in as a user
- User panel: power control, self-service Debian 13/AlmaLinux 9/openSUSE Leap 16/Arch Linux reinstall, domain and SSH key management, encrypted sticky notes (exportable), and a time machine (checkpoint snapshots; rolling back discards the later checkpoints)
- Multi-container users: group accounts as
name+name-1,name-2, … to share one login and password across several containers, with a switcher and per-group accent color - The admin can assign each user a dedicated accent color (click the username in the user list): that user's "log in" button and user-panel background use it, so impersonating operators can tell users apart at a glance. A user group shares one color
- CPU, memory, and disk oversubscription; quota changes apply live without a container restart
- Strict container network isolation; prefix mode assigns each container a dedicated
/112IPv6 block that it can subdivide - Traffic is counted in both directions; over-quota containers are rate-limited to 1 Mbps both ways
- Compressed ZFS storage by default; the fixed instance limit is 200 containers
- Ports 80/443 forward to container ports 80/443; port 80 uses shared HTTP proxying and port 443 shared SNI proxying
Installation
Ubuntu 24.04 is recommended; Ubuntu 22+ and Debian 12+ also work. Debian requires a kernel-module build and takes longer to install.
Recommended minimum: 1 CPU core, 1 GB RAM, 15 GB of free disk space, and root access. Both amd64 and arm64 are supported; testing has focused mainly on amd64.
git clone https://github.com/bluebluesoda/vpsmgr.git
cd vpsmgr
sudo ./install.sh # download the latest prebuilt binary
# sudo ./install.sh --local-build # always build from this checkout
# sudo ./install.sh --update # update an existing install from the release
The installer first downloads the prebuilt binary from GitHub Releases. If that fails, it falls back to a local build. --local-build always rebuilds from source. If --update cannot download the release, the existing binary is left untouched.
If the host already runs other public services and you only need IPv6 inbound access, without IPv4 SSH/port forwarding, use:
sudo ./install.sh --disable-v4forward
This option asks for confirmation at the beginning. Once confirmed, it writes net.v4_forward=false, skips vpsmgr's reserved-port check, and only needs one randomly selected panel entry port. HAProxy is still installed but remains stopped. IPv4 inbound forwarding can later be restored with vps config set net.v4_forward true. The domain proxy can also be disabled on its own with vps config set net.haproxy false (renamed from net.traefik; the values are unchanged and a pre-rename config is adopted as-is).
ZFS is the default storage backend. btrfs is supported as an alternative
(on a btrfs host the pool becomes a native subvolume; elsewhere a loop file)
and dir for disposable test machines only (it provides no quotas, snapshots,
or cloning):
sudo VPSMGR_STORAGE=btrfs ./install.sh
sudo VPSMGR_STORAGE=dir ./install.sh
IPv6
IPv6 pass-through is disabled by default. Interactive installation offers three choices:
- Prefix mode: the provider routes an entire IPv6 prefix to the host
- Address-pool mode: the provider supplies separate IPv6 addresses, which an administrator adds in the admin panel
- Disabled: IPv4 only
To check IPv6 reachability before installation:
bash check-ipv6-support.sh
Usage
vps add <name> [--cpu N] [--mem NG] [--disk NG] [--bandwidth N]
vps quota <name> [--cpu N] [--mem NG] [--disk NG] [--bandwidth N]
vps list [name]
vps power <name> start|stop|restart
vps passwd <name>
vps del <name>
vps panel-url
vps admin-passwd
vps config list|set|help
The default allocation is 1 CPU core, 1 GB of RAM, and 10 GB of disk. CPU values may be whole cores or a fraction from 0.1 to 0.9; disk capacity can only be increased. Generated passwords are shown once.
Bandwidth quotas are monthly GiB totals for upload and download combined. Containers over quota are rate-limited to 1 Mbps in both directions without a restart.
Container swap is controlled by incus.swap_ratio (default 0.5 — a 1 GiB memory container may use up to 512 MiB of host swap). Setting the value applies it to all existing containers immediately (no restart); after upgrading to a version with swap support, run vps install to apply the swap allowance to containers created before it.
Users can define an init script in the panel. It runs as root inside the container after reinstall, with output written to /var/log/vpsmgr-init.log.
In the admin user list, clicking a username (a deliberately low-key entry point) opens a picker where the operator can assign that user a dedicated accent color, or clear it back to the default. The color themes that user's "log in" button and, during an operator impersonation session, their user-panel background (adapted for both light and dark mode) so the operator can tell users apart. Users logging in with their own password always see the default theme. Users cannot change the color themselves.
Additional Images
Debian 13 is the default image. To also offer AlmaLinux 9, openSUSE Leap 16, Arch Linux, or a Debian dev image during reinstall, build them once:
sudo bash scripts/60-rhel-image.sh # AlmaLinux 9
sudo bash scripts/70-opensuse-image.sh # openSUSE Leap 16
sudo bash scripts/80-debian-dev-image.sh # Debian 13 dev image (full dev toolchain)
sudo bash scripts/90-arch-image.sh # Arch Linux (rolling — rebuilds to the latest snapshot on every run)
The image builder is not run by install.sh, keeping the default installation small.
Configuration and Removal
The configuration file is /etc/vpsmgr/config.yaml. Prefer the validated CLI over editing it directly:
vps config list
vps config help
vps config set <key> <value>
sudo ./uninstall.sh # remove software, keep config, database, and containers
sudo ./uninstall.sh --purge # also remove config, database, containers, storage, and Incus
See the documentation index for technical details.
Screenshots
