How to work with different projects¶

If you have more projects than just the default project, you must make sure to use or address the correct project when working with LXD.

Note

If you have projects that are confined to specific users, only users with full access to LXD can see all projects.

Users without full access can only see information for the projects to which they have access.

List projects¶

To list all projects (that you have permission to see), enter the following command:

lxc project list

By default, the output is presented as a list:

user@host:~$ lxc project list

+----------------------+--------+----------+-----------------+-----------------+----------+---------------+---------------------+---------+

|      NAME            | IMAGES | PROFILES | STORAGE VOLUMES | STORAGE BUCKETS | NETWORKS | NETWORK ZONES |     DESCRIPTION     | USED BY |

+----------------------+--------+----------+-----------------+-----------------+----------+---------------+---------------------+---------+

| default              | YES    | YES      | YES             | YES             | YES      | YES           | Default LXD project | 19      |

+----------------------+--------+----------+-----------------+-----------------+----------+---------------+---------------------+---------+

| my-project (current) | YES    | NO       | NO              | NO              | YES      | YES           |                     | 0       |

+----------------------+--------+----------+-----------------+-----------------+----------+---------------+---------------------+---------+

You can request a different output format by adding the --format flag. See lxc project list --help for more information.

Switch projects¶

By default, all commands that you issue in LXD affect the project that you are currently using. To see which project you are in, use the lxc project list command.

To switch to a different project, enter the following command:

lxc project switch <project_name>

Target a project¶

Instead of switching to a different project, you can target a specific project when running a command. Many LXD commands support the --project flag to run an action in a different project.

Note

You can target only projects that you have permission for.

The following sections give some typical examples where you would typically target a project instead of switching to it.

List instances in a project¶

To list the instances in a specific project, add the --project flag to the lxc list command. For example:

lxc list --project my-project

Move an instance to another project¶

To move an instance from one project to another, enter the following command:

lxc move <instance_name> <new_instance_name> --project <source_project> --target-project <target_project>

You can keep the same instance name if no instance with that name exists in the target project.

For example, to move the instance my-instance from the default project to my-project and keep the instance name, enter the following command:

lxc move my-instance my-instance --project default --target-project my-project

Copy a profile to another project¶

If you create a project with the default settings, profiles are isolated in the project (features.profiles is set to true). Therefore, the project does not have access to the default profile (which is part of the default project), and you will see an error similar to the following when trying to create an instance:

user@host:~$ lxc launch ubuntu:24.04 my-instance

Creating my-instance

Error: Failed instance creation: Failed creating instance record: Failed initialising instance: Failed getting root disk: No root device could be found

To fix this, you can copy the contents of the default project’s default profile into the current project’s default profile. To do so, enter the following command:

lxc profile show default --project default | lxc profile edit default