I see, do you know of a way in Docker (or Podman) to bind to a specific network interface on the host? (So that a container could use a macvlan adapter on the host)

Or are you more advocating for putting the Docker/Podman containers inside of a VM/LXC that has the macvlan adapter (or fancy incus bridge adapter) attached?

Confused at this sentiment, Docker includes a MACVLAN driver so clearly it’s intended to be used. Do you eschew any networking in Docker beyond the default bridge for some reason?

With the default Docker bridge networking the container won’t have a unique IP/MAC address on the local network, as far as I am aware. Communication with external clients will have to contact the host server’s IP at the port the container is tied to in order to interact. If there’s a way to specify a specific parent interface, let me know!

This was very insightful and I’d like to say I groked 90% of it meaningfully!

For an Incus container with its unique MAC interface, yes if I run a Docker container in that Incus container and leave the Docker container in its default bridge mode then I get the desired feature set (with the power of onions).

And thanks for explaining CNI, I’ve seen it referenced but didn’t fully get how it’s involved. I see that podman uses it to make a MACVLAN interface that can do DHCP (until 5.0, but the replacement seems to be feature-compatible for MACVLAN), so podman will sidestep the pain point of having to assign a no-go-zone on the DHCP server for a Docker swath of IPv4s, as you mentioned. Close enough for containers that the host doesn’t need to talk to.

So in summary:

• I’ve got Docker doing the extent it can manage with MACVLAN and there’s no extra magicks to be done on it.

• Podman will still use MACVLAN (no host to container comms still) but it’s able to use DHCP to get an address for the MACVLAN container.

• If the host must talk to the container with MACVLAN, I can either use the MACVLAN bypass as you linked to above or put the Docker/Podman container inside an Incus container with its bridge mode.

• Kubernutes continues to sound very powerful and flexible but is definitely beyond my reach yet. (Womp womp)

Thanks again for taking the time to type and explain all of that!

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

The host setup has eth0 as the physical interface to the rest of the network, with br0 replacing it completely. br0 has the same MAC as the eth0 interface and eth0 just forwards to br0 which then does the bridging internally. br0 being a bridge means that incus is able to split it off without MACVLAN but rather its nic device in bridge mode which “Uses an existing bridge on the host (br0) and creates a virtual device pair to connect the host bridge to the instance.” That results in a network interface that has its own MAC and is assigned a local IP by the DHCP server on the network while also being able to talk to the host.

Incus accomplishes the same goal as Proxmox (Proxmox has similar bridge network devices for its containers/VMs) just without Incus needing to be your OS/distro like Proxmox does, it’s just a package.

As for the Docker, the parent interface is br0 which has supplanted eth0. MACVLAN is working as it is intended to in Docker, as far as I can tell. The container has a networking device with its own MAC address, and after supplying the MACVLAN network device with my network’s subnet and gateway and static IP address in the Docker compose file it works as expected. If I don’t supply a static IP in the Docker compose file, Docker just assigns it the first IP in the given subnet - no DHCP interaction. This docker-net-dhcp plugin (I linked to the issue about it not working on the latest version of Docker anymore) was made to give Docker network devices the ability to use DHCP to get an IP address, but it’s clearly not something to rely on.

If I’m missing something about MACVLAN that makes DHCP work for Docker, let me know! Hardcoding an IP into a docker-compose file adds an extra step to remember compared to everything else being configured on the centralized DHCP server - hence the shoddy implementation claim for Docker.

Thanks for the link to using another MACVLAN and routing around the host<-/->container connection issue inherent to MACVLAN. I’ll keep it in mind as an alternate to Incus container around another container! I do wish there could be something like Incus’ hassle-free solution for Docker or Podman.

Not what you asked for but possibly useful; if you have apple devices and can use airplay instead of Bluetooth, https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync works really well. Even runs airplay 2 on a pi zero smoothly. Don’t know of Bluetooth otherwise sadly

Sad to hear for my quadlet future, do you remember what things were specifically annoying?

Hey bigdickdonkey, I recently tried and wasn’t able to shit my way through podman, there just wasn’t enough chatter and guides about it. I plan to revisit it when Debian 13 comes out, which will include podman quadlets. I also tried to get podman quadlets to work on Ubuntu 24 and got closer, but still didn’t manage and Ubuntu is squicky.

I read about true user rootless Docker and decided that was too finicky to keep up to date. It needs some annoying stuff to update, from what I could tell. I was planning on many users having their own containers, and that would have gotten annoying to manage. Maybe a single user would be an OK burden.

The podman people make a good argument for running podman as root and using userns to divvy out UIDs to achieve rootless https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/rootless-podman-user-namespace-modes but since podman is on the back burner till there’s more community and Debian 13, I applied that idea to Docker.

So I went with root Docker with the goals of:

• read only
• set user to different UID:GID for each container
• silo containers in individual Docker networks
• nothing gets /var/run/docker.sock
• cap_drop: all
• security-opt=no-new-privileges
• volumes all get tagged with :rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,Z

Basically it’s the security best practices from this list https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Docker_Security_Cheat_Sheet.html

This still has risk of the Docker daemon being hacked from the container itself somehow, which podman eliminates, but it’s as close to the podman ideal I can get within my knowledge now.

Most things will run as rootless+read-only+cap_drop with minor messing. Automatic ripping machine would not, but that project is a wild ride of required permissions. Everything else has succumbed, but I’ve needed to sometimes have a “pre launch container” to do permission changes or make somewhere like /opt writable.

I would transition one app stack at a time to the best security practices, and it’s easier since you don’t need to change container managers. Hope this helps!

Mine clicked just after a year :( so it’s waiting to get switches soldered cause I ain’t buying a new one but don’t have the will to do it yet cause I got my ancient G5 still. (I live in America, so doing warranty shit is a hassle, and I surmised it would fail again so I should just fix it now)

That’s what I mean, even e-waste quality razer isn’t double clicking!!

I had to replace the cable on my G5 after it frayed after about a decade, but after that it was back to it. Sorry you lost yours, and I hope you never double click on the G502!

(All the weights gang, build that wrist strength)

Mine is a G5, which looks like it lost the MX518’s sick ass faux metal and instead gets what I can best call “cracked lightning?”. I was too young to figure out mouse buying so the fam’s resident nerd chose that for me - I thank her to this day

One drive does suck nards, but for your double clicking; logitech has been using shitass switches to detect clicks for a while now. They sooner rather than later fail to click once. Only solution I’ve found is to replace the switches (hard mode), or keep using the logitech mouse I have from 2009.

It’s sucks, but you just gotta go for another brand. Even razer doesn’t have such a rampant double click problem.

Logitech enshitified their dominant market position by cheaping on switches - works for them, they sell more mice (if you don’t put together they’re the source of the problem and it’s not a one-off issue).

In incus, I had the same setup of an LCX container with a Docker container inside of it. I passed 1000/1000 to the LXC container but the LXC container’s default root user has a an ID set of 0/0. So I had to pass 0/0 to the Docker container, not 1000/1000 to get the read/write permissions working.

That may fix your issue as it’s basically the same tech, just different automated things implementing the LXC container!

Good to know Proxmox’s bad updates are more pervasive than the latest bad update.

I have been able to install Docker in the LXC containers and pull images in with the normal commands. I do that container-in-container to get effectively rootless docker containers for stuff that I couldn’t figure out how to run rootless. So you don’t even lose out on docker if you’re determined! And as you said incus goes on any OS, you can docker just fine on the base OS of your choice and use incus for specific things!

Try a diff email if you do want one, a friend recently got one via email signup and wait a few weeks. But I do abs agree it fuckin sucks you have to do any of this effort to get one, it is just enabling scalpers

I do use it to hold internet-exposed things in LXC containers to sidestep having to figure out how to not run things as Docker root.

You do not need it for everything, but since it’s not an OS that makes it your everything, that’s ok! Run Docker containers as you need, put internet-exposed ones in an LXC container, put home assistant in a VM because it’s special.

Ah, I was wondering which one you updated and it made your containers inaccessible!

You have to sign up for the in stock notifications, annoying but it works in a delayed fashion. Sad it does enable scalpers.

Incus or Proxmox (e.g., should I shift to Incus LTS or something?)