systemd-machined(8)

1SYSTEMD-MACHINED.SERVICE(8)systemd-machined.serviceSYSTEMD-MACHINED.SERVICE(8)
2
3
4

NAME

6       systemd-machined.service, systemd-machined - Virtual machine and
7       container registration manager
8

SYNOPSIS

10       systemd-machined.service
11
12       /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-machined
13

DESCRIPTION

15       systemd-machined is a system service that keeps track of locally
16       running virtual machines and containers.
17
18       systemd-machined is useful for registering and keeping track of both OS
19       containers (containers that share the host kernel but run a full init
20       system of their own and behave in most regards like a full virtual
21       operating system rather than just one virtualized app) and full virtual
22       machines (virtualized hardware running normal operating systems and
23       possibly different kernels).
24
25       systemd-machined should not be used for registering/keeping track of
26       application sandbox containers. A machine in the context of
27       systemd-machined is supposed to be an abstract term covering both OS
28       containers and full virtual machines, but not application sandboxes.
29
30       Machines registered with machined are exposed in various ways in the
31       system. For example:
32
33       •   Tools like ps(1) will show to which machine a specific process
34           belongs in a column of its own, and so will gnome-system-monitor[1]
35           or systemd-cgls(1).
36
37       •   systemd's various tools (systemctl(1), journalctl(1), loginctl(1),
38           hostnamectl(1), timedatectl(1), localectl(1), machinectl(1), ...)
39           support the -M switch to operate on local containers instead of the
40           host system.
41
42       •   systemctl list-machines will show the system state of all local
43           containers, connecting to the container's init system for that.
44
45       •   systemctl's --recursive switch has the effect of not only showing
46           the locally running services, but recursively showing the services
47           of all registered containers.
48
49       •   The machinectl command provides access to a number of useful
50           operations on registered containers, such as introspecting them,
51           rebooting, shutting them down, and getting a login prompt on them.
52
53       •   The sd-bus(3) library exposes the sd_bus_open_system_machine(3)
54           call to connect to the system bus of any registered container.
55
56       •   The nss-mymachines(8) module makes sure all registered containers
57           can be resolved via normal glibc gethostbyname(3) or getaddrinfo(3)
58           calls.
59
60       See systemd-nspawn(1) for some examples on how to run containers with
61       OS tools.
62
63       If you are interested in writing a VM or container manager that makes
64       use of machined, please have look at Writing Virtual Machine or
65       Container Managers[2]. Also see the New Control Group Interfaces[3].
66
67       The daemon provides both a C library interface (which is shared with
68       systemd-logind.service(8)) as well as a D-Bus interface. The library
69       interface may be used to introspect and watch the state of virtual
70       machines/containers. The bus interface provides the same but in
71       addition may also be used to register or terminate machines. For more
72       information please consult sd-login(3) and org.freedesktop.machine1(5)
73       and org.freedesktop.LogControl1(5).
74
75       A small companion daemon systemd-importd.service(8) is also available,
76       which implements importing, exporting, and downloading of container and
77       VM images.
78
79       For each container registered with systemd-machined.service that
80       employs user namespacing, users/groups are synthesized for the used
81       UIDs/GIDs. These are made available to the system using the User/Group
82       Record Lookup API via Varlink[4], and thus may be resolved with
83       userdbctl(1) or the usual glibc NSS calls.
84

NOTES

90        1. gnome-system-monitor
91           https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-system-monitor/
92
93        2. Writing Virtual Machine or Container Managers
94           https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/writing-vm-managers
95
96        3. New Control Group Interfaces
97           https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/ControlGroupInterface/
98
99        4. User/Group Record Lookup API via Varlink
100           https://systemd.io/USER_GROUP_API
101
102
103
104systemd 249                                        SYSTEMD-MACHINED.SERVICE(8)

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

SEE ALSO

NOTES