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Applications

In Pantavisor, every piece of user space — applications, system services, even OS components — runs as an isolated LXC container. Each container has its own read-only root filesystem (a SquashFS image), its own LXC configuration, and an optional run.json manifest that controls restart policy, auto-recovery, and service-mesh wiring.

Containers are versioned as part of the device's revision trail (/trails/). Any change — adding an app, updating a config file, removing a service — produces a new revision that Pantavisor applies atomically. If anything goes wrong, it rolls back to the previous good revision automatically.

This section covers the complete lifecycle of managing applications on a Pantavisor device:

  • Install Applications: Add containerized services to your device using the pvr CLI directly, through the pvtx local web UI, or remotely via Pantahub.
  • Configure Applications: Customize container behaviour by editing the _config/<container>/ overlay tree in your local pvr repository, then deploying the new revision.
  • View Applications: Monitor running containers, inspect health and auto-recovery state, and stream logs — on-device with pvcontrol and lxc-ls, or through the pvtx web UI.
  • Access Applications: Enter a running container's namespace with pventer, reach its network ports, or wire services together with the pv-xconnect service mesh.
  • Remove Applications: Remove a container from the device state with pvr app rm, commit, and deploy — Pantavisor stops and discards the container on the next revision.