How to install Landscape Server in a LXD container using cloud-init¶

This guide shows you how to deploy Landscape Server in a single LXD container using cloud-init. This approach is intended for testing and development environments, as it automates the entire setup process with a single cloud-init configuration file. Cloud-init handles the installation of all Landscape components, configuration of networking, certificates, and system settings.

Prepare your cloud-init configuration¶

This guide uses a sample cloud-init file created by the Landscape team. You can see other sample files and scripts in the Landscape scripts repository on GitHub.

Download the cloud-init file¶

To download the cloud-init configuration file and save it as cloud-init.yaml, run:

curl -o cloud-init.yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/canonical/landscape-scripts/main/provisioning/cloud-init-quickstart.yaml

Set cloud-init variables¶

Set the variables cloud-init will use by running this command with your own values:

declare -A VARIABLES=(
  [EMAIL]='<EMAIL_ADDRESS>'
  [TOKEN]='<PRO_TOKEN>'
  [HOSTNAME]='<HOST_NAME>'
  [DOMAIN]='<DOMAIN>'
  [TIMEZONE]='<TIME_ZONE>'
  [SMTP_HOST]='<SMTP_HOST>'
  [SMTP_PORT]='<SMTP_PORT>'
  [SMTP_USERNAME]='<SMTP_USERNAME>'
  [SMTP_PASSWORD]='<SMTP_PASSWORD>'
  [LANDSCAPE_PPA]='<LANDSCAPE_PPA>'
)

Replace the following values with your configuration:

<EMAIL_ADDRESS>: The email address that you’ll share with LetsEncrypt for your SSL certificate.

<PRO_TOKEN>: Your Ubuntu Pro token from https://ubuntu.com/pro/dashboard. If you’re running an Ubuntu Pro instance on Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud, leave this as an empty string.

<HOST_NAME>: The hostname from your FQDN. For example, server from server.domain.com.

<DOMAIN>: The top-level domain (TLD) for your FQDN. For example, domain.com from server.domain.com.

<TIME_ZONE>: Your timezone as represented in /usr/share/zoneinfo. If you leave this as an empty string, UTC time will be used.

<SMTP_HOST>: The hostname or IP address of the SMTP server provided by your email service provider. If you’re using SendGrid, enter smtp.sendgrid.net.

<SMTP_PORT>: The port number on which the SMTP server is listening for incoming connections. If you’re using SendGrid, enter 587 for port 587.

<SMTP_USERNAME>: The username required to authenticate with the SMTP server. This is provided by your email service provider. If you’re using SendGrid, enter apikey.

<SMTP_PASSWORD>: The password or API key associated with the SMTP username. If you’re using SendGrid, use an API Key from https://app.sendgrid.com/settings/api_keys

<LANDSCAPE_PPA>: The PPA for the specific Landscape installation you’re using. The PPA for the most recent recommended Landscape LTS is: ppa:landscape/self-hosted-26.04. The PPA for Landscape’s stable rolling release is: ppa:landscape/latest-stable. We recommend using an LTS for production deployments.

Apply variables to cloud-init¶

Populate the cloud-init configuration file with your variables:

for VALUE in "${!VARIABLES[@]}"; do sed -i "s|{% set $VALUE = '.*' %}|{% set $VALUE = '${VARIABLES[$VALUE]}' %}|" cloud-init.yaml; done

Set up LXD¶

Install or update LXD to the latest stable version:

snap list lxd &> /dev/null && sudo snap refresh lxd --channel latest/stable || sudo snap install lxd --channel latest/stable

This command checks if the LXD snap is installed. If it’s already installed, this command updates it to the latest version. If it’s not installed, this command installs the latest version.

Then, initialize LXD with default settings:

lxd init --auto

Configure networking¶

Identify the default network adapter on the machine and check the MTU configuration on this adapter:

read -r INTERFACE < <(ip route | awk '$1=="default"{print $5; exit}')

If your network uses non-standard MTU settings (jumbo frames with MTU 9000 or smaller than 1500), configure LXD to match. Google Cloud VMs, for example, use MTU values smaller than 1500.

To set the LXD bridge MTU to match your network:

lxc network set lxdbr0 bridge.mtu=$(ip link show $INTERFACE | awk '/mtu/ {print $5}')

Deploy Landscape with cloud-init¶

Cloud-init will automatically deploy Landscape and configure port forwarding for ports 80, 443, and 6554 to make the instance accessible.

Step 1: Install Landscape Quickstart inside a LXD container using cloud-init.yaml. This command installs Landscape on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

lxc launch ubuntu:24.04 landscape --config=user.user-data="$(cat cloud-init.yaml)" 

Step 2: Capture the IP address of the “landscape” LXD container:

LANDSCAPE_IP=$(lxc list landscape --format csv -c 4 | awk '{print $1}')

Step 3: Configure port forwarding for Port 6554, 443, and 80:

for PORT in 6554 443 80; do lxc config device add landscape tcp${PORT}proxyv4 proxy listen=tcp:0.0.0.0:${PORT} connect=tcp:${LANDSCAPE_IP}:${PORT}; done

Allowing TCP traffic on these ports in the host machine’s firewall settings and the network router configuration or enterprise firewall configuration enables the Landscape Quickstart instance to be accessible to the public Internet. This allows certbot to obtain a valid SSL certificate if a DNS record exists with the FQDN pointing to your host machine’s public IP address.

Step 4: To observe the progress, run:

lxc exec landscape -- bash -c "tail -f /var/log/cloud-init-output.log"

When the cloud-init process is complete, you’ll receive two lines similar to this:

Cloud-init v. 25.2-0ubuntu1~24.04.1 finished at Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:36:19 +0000. Datasource DataSourceLXD.  Up 408.07 seconds

Step 5: Press CTRL + C to terminate the tail process in your terminal window.