# Wireguard on Nspawn - Trent's Blog
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# Wireguard on Nspawn

date: 2025-01-30

## Introduction

Have you ever been thinking about `systemd-nspawn` containers and thought wouldn't it be awesome if you could just wireguard outa there as easily as you can with a virtual machine?

You can do it!

I have tested this with a Debian 12 `nspawn` container on a Debian 12 host, as well as both Arch Linux and Debian 12 containers on an Arch Linux host.

## install wireguard-tools in container

mask unwanted dependencies with a trailing `-`

`apt install wireguard-tools linux-base-`

You can now configure with `wg-quick` and start using `wireguard`.

## unpacking the install

The trick is to avoid installing the dependencies of `wireguard` that you don't need inside a container. You don't need a kernel, busybox, initramfs, wireguard-modules, or dkms.

We mask `linux-base-` by adding a `-` after it, and the result is that only `wireguard-tools` are installed, without `wireguard` or a bunch of other dependencies.

## what about LXD containers?

I'm curious if this will work in LXD containers, but don't really have a testing environment set up for that right now.