I just started working with Proxmox. We have several LXC containers. All are working fine but I want to view the contents of the container root directory. Seems to make sense to me since LXC containers are advertised as chroot on steriods. I thought /var/lib/lxc/{container}/rootfs is supposed to be that portal but all I see is an empty directory.

Am I correct that I should be able to view the container root directory in this manner?

Thanks.

Log into the guest node and type " cd / && ls -al"
The rootfs location is wherever you designated it was when you booted the container, often it's a remote drive mounted in /etc /fstab (makes storage management significantly simpler if leverage a modern SAN/NAS here)
That said, it could be as simple as a permissions issue. You may have root access on the guest but to find the guest on the hosts file system, you'd (probably) need root access on the host. An easy test is to save a uniquely named file system handle on the guests root directory and then do a "find" for it on the host.
If you can't "find" it, it's probably a permissions issue.

Yes, that works fine, but not what I intended. I did not fully explain. I want to view the root directory of the LXC containers from within the host. That is, LXC containers are loosely advertised as a "chroot on steroids." If that is the case then I should be able to view the contents of the LXC container root directory from within the host. I thought the rootfs directory was that portal.

I do not think this is a permissions issue. For example, a container config file contains the following:

lxc.rootfs = /var/lib/lxc/201/rootfs

Where 201 is the container ID.

Looking in /var/lib/lxc/201/rootfs shows an empty directory.

I found a way to use /var/lib/lxc/${container}/rootfs.

In Proxmox, LXC conf files are installed at /etc/pve/local/lxc/${container}.conf.

* Find the device path of each LXC. For example, /dev/pve/vm-${container}-disk-1.
* Mount the device path /dev/pve/vm-${container}-disk-1 to /var/lib/lxc/${container}/rootfs.

That's all.