lxc-execute fails to start container without rootfs

Thanks for reporting this bug. Your example pointed me to the root of the problem, which has been around for awhile.

This patch, plus upstream commit fabf7361da4845cd6cf268e0e85c3c6a1c0b0be4 (from this morning), fixes the bug for me.

This bug was fixed in the package lxc - 0.9.0-0ubuntu14

---------------
lxc (0.9.0-0ubuntu14) saucy; urgency=low

  * 0009-conf.c-if-we-don-t-specify-a-rootfs-we-still-need-pr.patch: if
    apparmor is enabled and no rootfs was specified, then re-mount /proc
    so that we can write the requested apparmor profile under /proc/1.
    (LP: #1188501)
 -- Serge Hallyn <email address hidden> Mon, 10 Jun 2013 09:27:32 -0500

Is this going to be back-ported to raring?

If not, is there an alternative command I can use on the raring version to do a similar thing to:

lxc-execute --name test /bin/bash

Sorry, I should have said: I confirm the fix works for me on saucy.

Hello NeilGreenwood, or anyone else affected,

Accepted lxc into raring-proposed. The package will build now and be available at http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lxc/0.9.0-0ubuntu3.4 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

neil@nbg-desktop:~$ apt-cache policy lxc
lxc:
  Installed: 0.9.0-0ubuntu3.3
  Candidate: 0.9.0-0ubuntu3.4
  Version table:
     0.9.0-0ubuntu3.4 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring-proposed/universe amd64 Packages
 *** 0.9.0-0ubuntu3.3 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring-updates/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.9.0-0ubuntu3 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring/universe amd64 Packages
neil@nbg-desktop:~$ sudo aptitude install lxc
The following packages will be upgraded:
  liblxc0 lxc
2 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 96 not upgraded.
Need to get 220 kB of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 python3-lxc : Depends: liblxc0 (= 0.9.0-0ubuntu3.3) but 0.9.0-0ubuntu3.4 is to be installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

     Remove the following packages:
1) lxc
2) lxc-templates
3) python3-lxc

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]

The following command has done the trick:
  sudo aptitude install lxc python3-lxc

I confirm that 0.9.0-0ubuntu3.4 has fixed the problem on raring.

This bug was fixed in the package lxc - 0.9.0-0ubuntu3.4

---------------
lxc (0.9.0-0ubuntu3.4) raring-proposed; urgency=low

  * 0009-conf.c-if-we-don-t-specify-a-rootfs-we-still-need-pr.patch: if
    apparmor is enabled and no rootfs was specified, then re-mount /proc
    so that we can write the requested apparmor profile under /proc/1.
    (LP: #1188501)
 -- Serge Hallyn <email address hidden> Mon, 01 Jul 2013 15:34:40 -0500

The verification of this Stable Release Update has completed successfully and the package has now been released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regresssions.