↓Skip to main content

Linux Containers: Introducing Incus 0.5

The Incus team has announced the release of Incus 0.5, the first release of 2024. This release brings several improvements to the Incus CLI, new virtual machine features, additional options for handling cluster evacuations and host shutdowns, and various bugfixes and performance improvements.

Highlights of the release include:

Ansible, Terraform/OpenTofu, and Packer
Incus now has support for Ansible, Terraform/ OpenTofu, and Packer. This means that users can now find a connection plugin for Incus in Ansible, an official provider for Terraform and OpenTofu, and a Packer plugin for Incus.

Linux distribution packages Additional packages for Incus are now available for Arch Linux, Debian (testing/unstable), Ubuntu (noble), and Void Linux. Detailed installation instructions can be found in the Incus documentation.

Translations
The Incus team has spent time cleaning up translations and setting up Weblate for Incus. This makes it easier than ever for users to log into Weblate and translate the Incus CLI into their language.

New features
Some of the new features introduced in Incus 0.5 include:

  • New incus file create command: This command allows users to create empty files, symlinks, and directories without transferring an existing local directory tree.
  • New incus snapshot show command: This command allows users to view the configuration data included in an Incus instance snapshot.
  • More shell completion options: Incus is transitioning to a more dynamic way of handling shell completion, and users can now retrieve initial shell completion profiles for Bash, Fish, PowerShell, and Zsh.
  • Support for multiple VM agent binaries: Incus now supports providing multiple agent binaries to virtual machines, which is useful for handling multiple operating systems and architectures.
  • Support for virtio-blk as a disk io.bus: After adding NVME support in Incus 0.2, Incus now offers virtio-blk as a disk I/O bus option in virtual machines.
  • Support for USB network device pass-through in VMs: Incus now detects when the parent network device of a virtual machine is connected over the USB bus and converts it into a USB device pass-through.
  • New cluster evacuation options: Two new cluster evacuation options, force-stop and stateful-stop, have been added to Incus. These options can be selected on a per-instance basis and provide different ways to handle the evacuation of instances in a cluster.
  • Ability to configure the host instance shutdown action: Users can now configure the action to be taken when the host instance shuts down. The options include stop, force-stop, and stateful-stop.
  • Ability to start instances as part of creation: Instances can now be started as part of the creation request, saving an API call and making it easier for users scripting the Incus API.
  • Configurable Loki instance name: Incus now allows users to provide a cluster name to be used as the Loki event source instance, making it easier to filter events from multiple clusters using the same Loki instance.
  • Extended HEAD support on files: The HEAD method on the Incus instance file API now returns the file size, allowing for the display of file sizes in addition to names and types.
  • Use of /run/incus for runtime data: Incus now stores runtime data in /run/incus, keeping /var/log/incus only for actual log files.

For the complete list of changes in Incus 0.5, refer to the changelog.

To try Incus for yourself, visit the Incus documentation for installation instructions and more information.

↑