Project, profile and extra disks

Phases 05 to 07: give the lab its own LXD project, turn the project's default profile into a template that creates the classroom users on first boot, and create the spare disks the storage exercises need.

Phase 05 · Create the rhce project (~2 min)

Keep the lab in its own LXD project so it cannot collide with anything else on the machine.

LXD UI: create the project

Project selector (top left) → Create project:

Field	Value	Why
Project name	rhce
Description	Kernel Path practice lab
Features	Customised
Allow custom profiles	✓ on	The lab gets its own template
Allow storage volumes	✓ on	The extra disks belong to the lab
Allow images	off	Share downloaded images
Allow networks	off	Use `rhcebr0` from the previous section

LXD UI: switch to it

Click Create, then switch the selector to rhce. Stay in it from now on.

Host: make the command line use it too

Then you don't need --project rhce on every command.

lxc project switch rhce

The lab profile

A profile is a template every VM inherits. The rhce project's default profile becomes the lab template: disk, network, size, and a cloud-init script that creates the users on first boot.

Part	What it does
`limits.*`	Default VM size. You raise it for workstation only.
`users:` / `chpasswd:`	Creates `student`, `devops` and root's password, as in the classroom
`packages:`	Python and SELinux bindings for Ansible, LVM tools for the storage tasks, manual pages and everyday tools for the system administration path, a nicer vim, plus the SELinux policy, firewalld and chrony a RHEL server has
`runcmd:` + `preserve_hostname`	Sets the full hostname from the VM name, e.g. `servera.lab.example.com`, and keeps it after reboots. Also switches on firewalld and chrony, and keeps `lxc exec` working under SELinux
`power_state:`	Reboots once after the first boot, so SELinux labels the disk and starts in enforcing mode
`devices:`	A 20 GiB system disk and a network card on `rhcebr0`

Phase 06 · Set up the lab profile (~10 min)

Make every new VM boot with the classroom users, packages and hostname.

LXD UI: open the profile editor

Project rhce → Profiles → default → Configuration → YAML configuration → Edit profile.

LXD UI: replace everything and save

Replace the whole profile with this, then Save changes. Nothing needs editing.

name: default
description: Kernel Path lab machine template
config:
  limits.cpu: "1"
  limits.memory: 1GiB
  security.secureboot: "false"        # avoids boot problems with Rocky VM images
  cloud-init.user-data: |
    #cloud-config
    ssh_pwauth: true                  # VM-to-VM password SSH, like the classroom
    preserve_hostname: true           # keep the FQDN set below across reboots
    users:
      - name: student
        gecos: Student User
        groups: [wheel]               # wheel = sudo with password
        shell: /bin/bash
        lock_passwd: false
        plain_text_passwd: student
      - name: devops
        gecos: Ansible User
        shell: /bin/bash
        lock_passwd: false
        plain_text_passwd: redhat
        sudo: "ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL"  # Ansible needs passwordless sudo
    chpasswd:
      expire: false
      users:
        - name: root
          password: redhat
          type: text
    timezone: UTC                     # or your own, e.g. Europe/London
    packages:
      - python3
      - python3-libselinux
      - vim-enhanced
      - bash-completion
      - man-db                        # manual pages and everyday tools,
      - man-pages                     # also used by the system administration path
      - tree
      - tmux
      - lsof
      - nano
      - bind-utils
      - lvm2
      - tar
      - rsync                         # ansible.posix.synchronize needs it on both ends
      - selinux-policy-targeted       # the image ships without SELinux; RHEL runs it enforcing
      - policycoreutils-python-utils  # semanage; Ansible's SELinux modules need it too
      - firewalld                     # running by default, as on a RHEL server
      - chrony
    runcmd:
      - hostnamectl set-hostname "$(cloud-init query local_hostname).lab.example.com"
      - semanage fcontext -a -t bin_t "/var/run/lxd_agent(/.*)?"   # keeps lxc exec working under SELinux
      - systemctl enable --now firewalld chronyd
    power_state:                      # reboot once: SELinux labels the disk and switches on
      mode: reboot
      condition: test -e /.autorelabel
devices:
  root:
    type: disk
    path: /
    pool: default
    size: 20GiB
  eth0:
    type: nic
    name: eth0
    network: rhcebr0

Phase 07 · Create the extra disks (~5 min)

Give each managed host an empty 5 GiB disk for the partition, LVM and filesystem exercises.

LXD UI: create four block volumes

Four times, for servera-disk2, serverb-disk2, serverc-disk2 and serverd-disk2: Storage → Volumes → Create volume.

Field	Value
Name	servera-disk2
Storage pool	default
Size	5 GiB
Content type	block