awesome-incus
A collection of links related to Incus, Incus OS, and LXC
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Awesome Incus #

A curated list of tools, libraries, resources, and projects for Incus -- the community-driven, next-generation system container, application container, and virtual machine manager.

Incus was created by Aleksa Sarai and is led by many of the same people who originally created LXD. It is maintained under the Linux Containers umbrella and licensed under Apache 2.0.

Contents #

📚 Official Resources #

  • Incus - The main Incus repository. A modern, secure, and powerful system container and virtual machine manager.
  • Incus Documentation - Official documentation covering installation, configuration, clustering, APIs, and more.
  • Incus REST API - REST API documentation covering communication patterns and core concepts, with links to the full specification.
  • Try Incus Online - Browser-based demo environment to try Incus without installing anything.
  • Linux Containers Image Server - Official image server with 25+ distributions (Alpine, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, NixOS, FreeBSD, and more) for both containers and VMs. Pre-configured as the images: remote in Incus.
  • Release Announcements - Official release notes and announcements.
  • LXC - The low-level Linux container runtime that Incus builds upon.
  • LXC CI - Continuous integration and build infrastructure for the Linux Containers ecosystem.

💿 Incus OS #

  • Incus OS - An immutable Linux OS image dedicated to running Incus. Built on Debian 13 with UEFI Secure Boot, TPM 2.0 support, and disk encryption. Supports amd64 and arm64.
  • Incus OS Documentation - Official docs covering installation, tutorials, service configuration, and API reference.

🖥️ GUI and Web Interfaces #

  • incus-ui-canonical - Web UI for Incus, forked from Canonical's LXD-UI and regularly rebased. TypeScript/React.
  • Hye Ararat - Modern web dashboard for managing Incus infrastructure with instance consoles, project management, and operations tracking.
  • ixui - React web UI for Incus with a Proxmox-inspired dark theme and ESXi-style layout. Features TLS and OIDC auth, cluster awareness, snapshot scheduling, and network ACL editing. Pre-alpha.
  • Lexi - Single-binary web console for managing Incus LXC containers. Built with Go, HTMX, and Tailwind. PolyForm Noncommercial license.
  • OneClickVirt - Extensible virtualization management platform with a Vue 3 web UI supporting Incus, LXD, Docker, Proxmox VE, QEMU/KVM, and more.

⌨️ CLI Tools and Wrappers #

  • incus-compose - Drop-in replacement for Docker Compose that runs on Incus. Supports up, down, logs, exec, health checks, OCI image pulling, bridge networks, and volumes.
  • incus-apply - Declarative configuration management for Incus via YAML files. Define instances, profiles, and resource limits as code.
  • Incant - Incus frontend to describe and provision development environments using YAML config with Mako/Jinja2 templating. Available on PyPI as incus-incant.
  • Blincus - CLI to create disposable Incus containers bound to project directories with X11/Wayland/PulseAudio/PipeWire/GPU forwarding.
  • ssh2incus - Full-featured SSH server for Incus instances. Routes SSH connections via the Incus API with on-demand instance creation, browser terminal, SCP/SFTP, port forwarding, and multi-factor auth. Beta.
  • incus-app-container - Opinionated script for creating Incus containers that run Docker Compose applications with auto-reload and VLAN support. TypeScript/Deno.
  • lxd-compose - Infrastructure-as-Code deployment tool with both LXD and Incus executor support (v0.33.0+). Helm/Jinja2 templating.
  • incus-app-launcher - Wrapper to run Proxmox community scripts on Incus with native container provisioning and prompt automation.
  • Labkit - Python CLI toolkit for organizing container-based development labs on Incus with dependency tracking, lifecycle control, and auditing.
  • HawkTUI - TUI command center for Linux boxes wrapping system updates, backups, compose stacks, Incus instances, and fleet SSH ops.

📦 SDKs and Client Libraries #

  • Incus Go Client - Go client library for the Incus API. Supports Unix socket and HTTPS connections, instance management, image operations, clustering, storage, networking, and more.
  • Incus Go API Types - Go types/structs for the Incus REST API.
  • XPipe - Desktop connection hub that supports Incus containers alongside Docker, Podman, SSH, Kubernetes, and more. Java.
  • Colima - Container runtimes on macOS/Linux with minimal setup. Supports Incus as a runtime (colima start --runtime incus) since v0.7.0.

🏗️ Infrastructure as Code #

Terraform / OpenTofu #

  • terraform-provider-incus - Terraform provider for Incus, maintained under the lxc GitHub organization. Published in the Terraform Registry. Manages instances, networks, storage, profiles, images, and more.

Packer #

Salt #

  • salt-incus-formula - Comprehensive Salt formula for managing Incus via its REST API: installation, instances, storage, networks, profiles, images, and snapshots.

Juju #

  • incus-charm - Juju charm for deploying and operating Incus with automatic cluster formation, Vault/OVN/Ceph integration, and day-2 operations.

⚙️ Configuration Management #

Ansible #

  • incus-plugin-ansible - Ansible collection with modules for managing Incus containers and VMs, including dynamic inventory and lookup plugins.
  • ansible-role-packer-incus - Ansible role for building Incus system container images with Packer.
  • ansible-collections-incus - Feature-rich Ansible collection (damex.incus) with 36+ modules and 20+ roles for comprehensive Incus management including clusters, networks, storage, images, and instances.

💾 Image Building and Distribution #

  • Distrobuilder - System container and VM image builder for Incus and LXC. Supports building images for numerous Linux distributions and repackaging Windows ISOs. CII Best Practices certified.
  • incus-windows - Toolset for creating Windows VM images (Win 10/11, Server 2008 R2+) optimized for Incus with pre-installed drivers, SPICE guest tools, and Incus agent.
  • Polar - LXD/Incus image server hosting based on the SimpleStreams protocol. Built with Elixir/Phoenix. Production instance at images.opsmaru.com. (No commits since July 2024)
  • IncusForge - Lightweight web app for publishing and distributing custom Incus images through SimpleStreams repositories.
  • distrobuilder-menu - Python console frontend to Distrobuilder for building LXD/LXC images interactively.
  • macOS on Incus: Orchard - Build tool that prepares, compiles, packages, and signs the artifacts needed to boot macOS on Incus. See also QEMU Scriptlet, a QEMU scriptlet for macOS virtualization on Incus.

🌐 Clustering and Orchestration #

  • Cluster API Provider Incus (CAPN) - Kubernetes Cluster API infrastructure provider for Incus, LXD, and MicroCloud. Supports VMs and containers, kube-vip/OVN/haproxy load balancing, and pre-built kubeadm images.
  • Kubedee - Fast multi-node Kubernetes development and test clusters on Incus/LXD using CRI-O and Flannel. 4-node clusters in under 60 seconds.
  • k16s Exam Simulator - CKA/CKS exam practice environment using real kubeadm clusters with Incus LXC containers as worker nodes.

🔌 Networking #

Incus natively supports bridge networks, OVN networks, Macvlan, SR-IOV, physical passthrough, network ACLs, BGP, load balancers, and IPAM.

  • DNSweaver - Automatic DNS record management for homelab infrastructure including Incus, Docker, Proxmox, Traefik, and more. Supports 11 DNS providers (Pi-hole, Technitium, AdGuard, Cloudflare, etc.) with mTLS.

📊 Monitoring and Observability #

Incus has built-in Prometheus/OpenMetrics metrics at the /1.0/metrics API endpoint, including instance CPU/memory/disk/network metrics, project resource counts, and internal daemon health.

  • BlastRadius - Agentless homelab dependency and impact dashboard for Incus, Docker, Nginx Proxy Manager, UniFi, DNS, and public services.

💾 Backup and Replication #

  • IncusAutobackup - Stateless backup tool for two Incus(OS) systems in a source-to-target topology. Creates snapshots, replicates volumes/instances, and manages retention with flexible thinning rules. Go.
  • ScottiBYTE Incus Backup - Centralized backup and restore platform for Incus containers and VMs. Multi-remote discovery, scheduled backups, retention policies, live and stop-restart modes. Docker-based.
  • lxcSnap - Simple tool to snapshot LXC containers on Incus and backup/restore them offsite. (No commits since June 2024)

🚚 Migration Tools #

  • Migration documentation - Official docs covering migration between Incus servers, importing physical/virtual machines via incus-migrate, and converting LXC containers via lxc-to-incus.

Zabbly also offers commercial migration assistance for LXD-to-Incus migrations (single systems or clusters up to 50 nodes).

⚡ CI/CD Integrations #

  • GARM - GitHub/Gitea Actions Runner Manager with multi-cloud support and pluggable providers including Incus, AWS, Azure, GCP, OpenStack, Kubernetes, and more.
  • garm-provider-incus - Incus external provider for GARM. Creates GitHub Actions runners as Incus containers or VMs with cloud-init, custom scripts, and multi-image support.
  • incus-gentoo-github-pullrequest-tester - Scripts for automated pull request testing using Incus containers and Gentoo Linux.

🤖 AI Agent Sandboxing #

A rapidly growing category: using Incus containers/VMs to isolate AI coding agents.

  • Code-on-Incus (coi) - CLI giving each AI coding agent its own isolated Linux machine with root, Docker, systemd, and active defense. Kernel-level threat monitoring, credential isolation, headless automation, and multi-agent support. Supports Claude Code, Codex, opencode, and more.
  • Pixels - Disposable Linux containers for AI coding agents with extensible backends (Incus, TrueNAS), snapshot-based checkpoints, network egress control, and an MCP server.
  • JailBee - Per-branch isolated development environments in Incus containers with nested Docker, egress allowlists, and first-class coding agent support. TUI dashboard and Qt GUI.
  • Vibebin - Self-hosted platform for persistent AI coding sandboxes on Incus with automatic HTTPS, SSH routing, and pre-installed AI tools (Claude Code, opencode, etc.).
  • Clincus - Secure container runtime for AI coding tools on Incus with session persistence, dashboard, snapshots, and resource constraints.
  • Inca - Launch coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor CLI, Copilot CLI) in disposable Incus VMs with golden image workflow and virtiofs file sharing.
  • Hacocoon - Secure, policy-controlled development environments for AI agents, currently backed by Incus as the sole active isolation backend.
  • incus-web - Disposable Incus containers with browser terminal (WeTTY/ghostty-web) for coding agents.

🧩 Projects Built on Incus #

  • Polyseat - Multi-seat game streaming on a single Linux PC. Each player gets an isolated Incus container with their own Steam account, controller, and Moonlight stream.
  • YunoHost - Uses Incus-based dev environments for developing on the self-hosting platform. See also incus_ynh for packaging Incus as a YunoHost app.
  • OneClickVirt/incus - NAT server provisioning and management via Incus containers for VPS hosting.
  • OVE - Ericsson's tool for gathering git repos and managing builds/tests, with Incus support.
  • cobalt-crucible - Incus dev container setup for WSL2 with multi-language toolchain in one command.

📖 Tutorials and Blog Posts #

Tutorials and Playgrounds #

💬 Community #

🏢 Commercial Support #

  • Zabbly - Founded by Stéphane Graber (Incus project leader). Provides consulting, migrations (LXD to Incus), engineering, training, Incus cluster hosting, and GitHub Actions runner hosting. Maintains tested packages for Incus, Linux kernel, ZFS, OVN, and OVS on Debian/Ubuntu.

Contributing #

Contributions welcome!

License #