Remote image servers

The lxc CLI command comes pre-configured with the following default remote image servers:

images:

This server provides unofficial images for a variety of Linux distributions. The images are built to be compact and minimal, and therefore the default image variants do not include cloud-init. Where possible, /cloud variants that include cloud-init are provided. See cloud-init support in images.

This server does not provide official Ubuntu images (for those, use the ubuntu: server). It does, however, provide desktop variants of current Ubuntu releases.

See images.lxd.canonical.com for an overview of available images.

ubuntu:

This server provides official stable Ubuntu images. All images are cloud images, which means that they include both cloud-init and the lxd-agent.

See cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases for an overview of available images.

ubuntu-daily:

This server provides official daily Ubuntu images. All images are cloud images, which means that they include both cloud-init and the lxd-agent.

See cloud-images.ubuntu.com/daily for an overview of available images.

ubuntu-minimal:

This server provides official Ubuntu Minimal images. All images are cloud images, which means that they include both cloud-init and the lxd-agent.

See cloud-images.ubuntu.com/minimal/releases for an overview of available images.

ubuntu-minimal-daily:

This server provides official daily Ubuntu Minimal images. All images are cloud images, which means that they include both cloud-init and the lxd-agent.

See cloud-images.ubuntu.com/minimal/daily for an overview of available images.

Remote server types

LXD supports the following types of remote image servers:

Simple streams servers

Pure image servers that use the simple streams format. The default image servers are simple streams servers.

Public LXD servers

LXD servers that are used solely to serve images and do not run instances themselves.

To make a LXD server publicly available over the network on port 8443, set the core.https_address configuration option to :8443 and do not configure any authentication methods (see How to expose LXD to the network for more information). Then set the images that you want to share to public.

LXD servers

Regular LXD servers that you can manage over a network, and that can also be used as image servers.

For security reasons, you should restrict the access to the remote API and configure an authentication method to control access. See How to expose LXD to the network and Remote API authentication for more information.