How to manage images¶
When working with images, you can inspect various information about the available images, view and edit their properties and configure aliases to refer to specific images. You can also export an image to a file, which can be useful to copy or import it on another machine.
List available images¶
To list all images on a server, enter the following command:
lxc image list [<remote>:]
If you do not specify a remote, the default remote is used.
Query the /1.0/images
endpoint to list all images on the server:
lxc query --request GET /1.0/images
To include information about each image, add recursion=1
:
lxc query --request GET /1.0/images?recursion=1
See GET /1.0/images
and GET /1.0/images?recursion=1
for more information.
Note
The /1.0/images
endpoint is available on LXD servers, but not on simple streams servers (see Remote server types).
Public image servers, like the official Ubuntu image server, use the simple streams format.
To retrieve the list of images from a simple streams server, start at the streams/v1/index.sjson
index (for example, https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/streams/v1/index.sjson
).
Go to Images to view all images on the local server.
Filter available images¶
To filter the results that are displayed, specify a part of the alias or fingerprint after the command. For example, to show all Ubuntu 24.04 LTS images, enter the following command:
lxc image list ubuntu: 24.04
You can specify several filters as well. For example, to show all Arm 64-bit Ubuntu 24.04 LTS images, enter the following command:
lxc image list ubuntu: 24.04 arm64
To filter for properties other than alias or fingerprint, specify the filter in <key>=<value>
format.
For example:
lxc image list ubuntu: 24.04 architecture=x86_64
You can filter the images that are displayed by any of their fields.
For example, to show all Ubuntu images, or all images for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS:
lxc query --request GET /1.0/images?filter=properties.os+eq+ubuntu
lxc query --request GET /1.0/images?filter=properties.version+eq+24.04
You can specify several filters as well. For example, to show all Arm 64-bit images for virtual machines, enter the following command:
lxc query --request GET /1.0/images?filter=architecture+eq+arm64+and+type+eq+virtual-machine
You can also use a regular expression:
lxc query --request GET "/1.0/images?filter=fingerprint+eq+be25.*"
See GET /1.0/images
and Filtering for more information.
To filter the images that are displayed, use the search box.
For example, to show all Ubuntu images, search for ubuntu
.
To display only images for version 24.04, search for 24.04
.
View image information¶
To view information about an image, enter the following command:
lxc image info <image_ID>
As the image ID, you can specify either the image’s alias or its fingerprint.
For a remote image, remember to include the remote server (for example, ubuntu:24.04
).
To display only the image properties, enter the following command:
lxc image show <image_ID>
You can also display a specific image property (located under the properties
key) with the following command:
lxc image get-property <image_ID> <key>
For example, to show the release name of the official Ubuntu 24.04 LTS image, enter the following command:
lxc image get-property ubuntu:24.04 release
To view all information about an image, query it using its fingerprint:
lxc query --request GET /1.0/images/<fingerprint>
See GET /1.0/images/{fingerprint}
for more information.
If you don’t know the fingerprint but the alias, you can retrieve the fingerprint by querying the /1.0/images/aliases/{alias}
endpoint:
lxc query --request GET /1.0/images/aliases/<alias>
See GET /1.0/images/aliases/{name}
for more information.
The UI does not currently support viewing detailed image information.
Edit image properties¶
To set a specific image property that is located under the properties
key, enter the following command:
lxc image set-property <image_ID> <key> <value>
Note
These properties can be used to convey information about the image. They do not configure LXD’s behavior in any way.
To edit the full image properties, including the top-level properties, enter the following command:
lxc image edit <image_ID>
To set a specific image property that is located under the properties
key, send a PATCH request to the image:
lxc query --request PATCH /1.0/images/<fingerprint> --data '{
"properties": {
"<key>": "<value>"
}
}'
See PATCH /1.0/images/{fingerprint}
for more information.
Note
These properties can be used to convey information about the image. They do not configure LXD’s behavior in any way.
To update the full image properties, including the top-level properties, send a PUT request with the full image data:
lxc query --request PUT /1.0/images/<fingerprint> --data '<image_configuration>'
See PUT /1.0/images/{fingerprint}
for more information.
The UI does not currently support editing image properties.
Delete an image¶
To delete a local copy of an image, enter the following command:
lxc image delete <image_ID>
To delete a local copy of an image, send a DELETE request:
lxc query --request DELETE /1.0/images/<fingerprint>
See DELETE /1.0/images/{fingerprint}
for more information.
In the images list, click the Delete button (
You can also select several images and click the Delete images button at the top to delete all selected images.
Deleting an image won’t affect running instances that are already using it, but it will remove the image locally.
After deletion, if the image was downloaded from a remote server, it will be removed from local cache and downloaded again on next use. However, if the image was manually created (not cached), the image will be deleted.
Configure image aliases¶
Configuring an alias for an image can be useful to make it easier to refer to an image, since remembering an alias is usually easier than remembering a fingerprint. Most importantly, however, you can change an alias to point to a different image, which allows creating an alias that always provides a current image (for example, the latest version of a release).
You can see some of the existing aliases in the image list. To see the full list, enter the following command:
lxc image alias list
You can directly assign an alias to an image when you copy or import or publish it. Alternatively, enter the following command:
lxc image alias create <alias_name> <image_fingerprint>
You can also delete an alias:
lxc image alias delete <alias_name>
To rename an alias, enter the following command:
lxc image alias rename <alias_name> <new_alias_name>
If you want to keep the alias name, but point the alias to a different image (for example, a newer version), you must delete the existing alias and then create a new one.
To retrieve a list of all defined aliases, query the /1.0/images/aliases
endpoint:
lxc query --request GET /1.0/images/aliases
To include information about each alias, add recursion=1
:
lxc query --request GET /1.0/images/aliases?recursion=1
See GET /1.0/images/aliases
and GET /1.0/images/aliases?recursion=1
for more information.
You can directly assign an alias to an image when you copy or import or publish it.
Alternatively, send a POST request to the /1.0/images/aliases
endpoint to create an alias:
lxc query --request POST /1.0/images/aliases --data '{
"name": "<alias_name>",
"target": "<image_fingerprint>"
}'
See POST /1.0/images/aliases
for more information.
You can also delete an alias:
lxc query --request DELETE /1.0/images/aliases/<alias_name>
To rename an alias, send a POST request to the alias:
lxc query --request POST /1.0/images/aliases/<alias_name> --data '{
"name": "<new_alias_name>"
}'
If you want to keep the alias name, but point the alias to a different image (for example, a newer version), send a PATCH request to the alias:
lxc query --request PATCH /1.0/images/aliases/<alias_name> --data '{
"target": "<new_fingerprint>"
}'
See DELETE /1.0/images/aliases/{name}
, POST /1.0/images/aliases/{name}
, and PATCH /1.0/images/aliases/{name}
for more information.
The UI displays configured aliases in the images list, but it does not currently support configuring image aliases.
Export an image to a set of files¶
Images are located in the image store of your local server or a remote LXD server. You can export them to a file or a set of files though (see Image tarballs). This method can be useful to back up image files or to transfer them to an air-gapped environment.
To export a container image to a set of files, enter the following command:
lxc image export [<remote>:]<image> [<output_directory_path>]
To export a virtual machine image to a set of files, add the --vm
flag:
lxc image export [<remote>:]<image> [<output_directory_path>] --vm
Send a query to the export
endpoint of the image to retrieve it:
curl -X GET --unix-socket /var/snap/lxd/common/lxd/unix.socket lxd/1.0/images/<fingerprint>/export \
-H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data" -o <output-file>
If the image is a split image, the output file contains two separate tarballs in multipart format.
See GET /1.0/images/{fingerprint}/export
for more information.
The UI does not currently support exporting images.
See Image format for a description of the file structure used for the image.