systemd-nspawn/machinectl and macvlan

Question

I would like to create a nspawn container connected to the network via macvlan and dhcp. All documentation I have found were very instructive but did not offer a step by step procedure for this setup.

What I did so far was to create the container (debian base) using debootstrap including systemd-container:

debootstrap --arch=armhf --include=systemd-container stretch /var/lib/machines/raspbian-09 http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian

Native host network

running:

systemd-nspawn -b -M raspbian-09

or

machinectl raspbian-09

with the unit file /etc/systemd/nspawn/raspbian-09.nspawn containing:

[Exec]
Boot=true
PrivateUsers=no

[Network]
Private=no
VirtualEthernet=no

In both cases, the network connection is fine.

Macvlan

For the macvlan, I either run the command:

systemd-nspawn -b -M raspbian-09 --network-macvlan=eth0

or

machinectl raspbian-09

with the unit file /etc/systemd/nspawn/raspbian-09.nspawn containing:

[Exec]
Boot=true
PrivateUsers=no

[Network]
MACVLAN=eth0

In both cases, the connection to the network does not work.

Within the container, I can see that an interface mv-eth0 is created:

# networkctl
IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP     
  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged 
  2 mv-eth0          ether              degraded    configuring

however, there is no ipv4 address:

# ip a
mv-eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff link-netnsid 0
    inet6 xxxx::xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx/64 scope link 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

What other configurations on the host and container should be made?

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 25 '20 at 12:50

One possible solution is the following:

All the following actions are to be done in the container.

Check if your container is using systemd-networkd, you can check if that is the case by running the following command

systemctl status systemd-networkd

If the service is not enabled and not running, you will need to enable and start it

systemctl enable systemd-networkd
systemctl start systemd-networkd

You may also need to enable and start the systemd-resolved service, if it is not enabled and started.

systemctl enable systemd-resolved
systemctl start systemd-resolved

If you need a dynamic ipv4 address created for you on your macvlan interface, you can then create the network setup file /etc/systemd/network/mveth0.network, with the following contents

[Match]
Name=mv-eth0

[Network]
DHCP=ipv4

If you need to set a static ipv4 address for the macvlan interface. For example if you have a gateway address 192.168.1.1, and need to set the ipv4 address to 192.168.1.14/24, you can then use the following content for the network setup file /etc/systemd/network/mveth0.network.

[Match]
Name=mv-eth0

[Network]
IPForward=yes
Address=192.168.1.14/24
Gateway=192.168.1.1
# DNS= ?

After creating the file you will need to restart the systemd-networkd service

systemctl restart systemd-networkd

You may need to use sudo in your case to run the commands

systemd-nspawn/machinectl and macvlan

1 Answers1