# Incus

Incus is a modern, secure and powerful system container and virtual machine manager.

<!-- Include start Incus intro -->

It provides a unified experience for running and managing full Linux systems inside containers or virtual machines. Incus supports images for a large number of Linux distributions (official Ubuntu images and images provided by the community) and is built around a very powerful, yet pretty simple, REST API. Incus scales from one instance on a single machine to a cluster in a full data center rack, making it suitable for running workloads both for development and in production.

Incus allows you to easily set up a system that feels like a small private cloud. You can run any type of workload in an efficient way while keeping your resources optimized.

You should consider using Incus if you want to containerize different environments or run virtual machines, or in general run and manage your infrastructure in a cost-effective way.

You can try Incus online at: [`https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/try-it/`](https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/try-it/)

<!-- Include end Incus intro -->

## Project history
Incus, which is named after the [Cumulonimbus incus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulonimbus_incus) or anvil cloud
started as a community fork of Canonical's LXD following [Canonical's takeover](https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/) of the LXD project from the
Linux Containers community.

The project was then adopted by the Linux Containers community, taking back the spot left empty by LXD's departure.

Incus is a true open source community project, free of any [CLA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement) and
remains released under the [Apache 2.0 license](https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0).
It's maintained by the same team of developers that first created LXD.

## Get started

See [Getting started](https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/tutorial/first_steps/) in the Incus documentation for installation instructions and first steps.

- Release announcements: [`https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/c/news/`](https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/c/news/)
- Release tarballs: [`https://github.com/lxc/incus/releases/`](https://github.com/lxc/incus/releases/)
- Documentation: [`https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/`](https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/docs/main/)

## Status

Type                | Service               | Status
---                 | ---                   | ---
Tests               | GitHub                | [![Build Status](https://github.com/lxc/incus/actions/workflows/tests.yml/badge.svg?branch=main)](https://github.com/lxc/incus/actions?query=event%3Apush+branch%3Amain)
Go documentation    | Godoc                 | [![GoDoc](https://godoc.org/github.com/lxc/incus/v7/client?status.svg)](https://godoc.org/github.com/lxc/incus/v7/client)
Static analysis     | GoReport              | [![Go Report Card](https://goreportcard.com/badge/github.com/lxc/incus)](https://goreportcard.com/report/github.com/lxc/incus)
Translations        | Weblate               | [![Translation status](https://hosted.weblate.org/widget/incus/svg-badge.svg)](https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/incus/)

## Security

<!-- Include start security -->

Consider the following aspects to ensure that your Incus installation is secure:

- Keep your operating system up-to-date and install all available security patches.
- Use only supported Incus versions.
- Restrict access to the Incus daemon and the remote API.
- Do not use privileged containers unless required. If you use privileged containers, put appropriate security measures in place. See the [LXC security page](https://linuxcontainers.org/lxc/security/) for more information.
- Configure your network interfaces to be secure.
<!-- Include end security -->

See [Security](https://github.com/lxc/incus/blob/main/doc/explanation/security.md) for detailed information.

**IMPORTANT:**
<!-- Include start security note -->
Local access to Incus through the Unix socket always grants full access to Incus.
This includes the ability to attach file system paths or devices to any instance as well as tweak the security features on any instance.

Therefore, you should only give such access to users who you'd trust with root access to your system.
<!-- Include end security note -->
<!-- Include start support -->

## Support and community

The following channels are available for you to interact with the Incus community.

### Bug reports

You can file bug reports and feature requests at: [`https://github.com/lxc/incus/issues/new`](https://github.com/lxc/incus/issues/new)

### Community support

Community support is handled at: [`https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org`](https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org)

### Commercial support

Commercial support is currently available from [Zabbly](https://zabbly.com) for users of their [Debian or Ubuntu packages](https://github.com/zabbly/incus).

## Documentation

The official documentation is available at: [`https://github.com/lxc/incus/tree/main/doc`](https://github.com/lxc/incus/tree/main/doc)

<!-- Include end support -->

## Contributing

Fixes and new features are greatly appreciated. Make sure to read our [contributing guidelines](CONTRIBUTING.md) first!
