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JuJu
JuJu: the Arch Linux based distro that runs upon any Linux distros without root access
Description
JuJu is a lightweight Arch Linux based distribution that allows to have an isolated GNU/Linux environment inside any generic host GNU/Linux OS and without the need to have root privileges for installing packages.
JuJu contains mainly the package managers (called pacman and yaourt) that allows to access to a wide range of packages from the Arch Linux repositories.
The main advantages on using JuJu are:
- Install packages without root privileges.
- Isolated environment in which you can install packages without affecting a production system.
- Access to a wide range of packages in particular on GNU/Linux distros that may contain limited repositories (such as CentOS and RedHat).
- Available for x86_64, x86 and ARM architectures but you can build your own image from scratch too!
- All Arch Linux lovers can have their favourite distro everywhere!
Quickstart
There are three different ways you can run JuJu:
- As normal user - Allow to make basic operations using proot:
juju
- As fakeroot - Allow to install/remove packages using proot:
juju -f
- As root - Allow to have fully root privileges inside JuJu environment using arch-chroot (you need to be root for executing this):
juju -r
If the JuJu image has not been downloaded yet, the script will download the JuJu image and will place it to the default directory ~/.juju. You can change the default directory by changing the environment variable JUJU_HOME.
If you are new on Archlinux and you are not familiar with pacman package manager visit the pacman rosetta page.
Installation
Just clone the JuJu repo somewhere (for example in ~/juju):
git clone git://github.com/fsquillace/juju ~/juju
export PATH=~/juju/bin:$PATH
Alternatively, another installation method would be to directly download the JuJu image and place it to the default directory ~/.juju:
ARCH=<one of "x86_64", "x86", "arm">
mkdir ~/.juju
curl https://bitbucket.org/fsquillace/juju-repo/raw/master/juju-${ARCH}.tar.gz | tar -xz -C ~/.juju
export PATH=~/.juju/opt/juju/bin:$PATH
JuJu can works on GNU/Linux OS with kernel version greater or equal 2.6.0 (JuJu was not tested on kernel versions older than this) on 64 bit, 32 bit and ARM architectures.
Advanced usage
Build image
You can build a new JuJu image from scratch by running the following command:
juju -b [-n]
The script will create a directory containing all the essentials
files in order to make JuJu working properly (such as pacman, yaourt, arch-chroot and proot).
The option -n will skip the final validation tests if they are not needed.
Remember that the script to build the image must run in an Arch Linux OS with
arch-install-scripts, package-query, git and the base-devel packages installed.
To change the build directory just use the JUJU_TEMPDIR (by default /tmp).
After creating the image juju-x86_64.tar.gz you can install it by running:
juju -i juju-x86_64.tar.gz
Related wiki page:
Bind directories
To bind a host directory to a guest location, you can use proot arguments:
juju -p "-b /mnt/mydata:/home/user/mydata"
Check out the proot options with:
juju -p "--help"
###Automatic fallback to classic chroot### Since the arch-chroot may not work on some distros, JuJu automatically tries to fallback to the classic chroot.
JuJu as a container
Although JuJu has not been designed to be a complete container, it is even possible to virtualize the process tree thanks to the systemd container. The JuJu containter allows to run services inside the container that can be visible from the host OS through the network. The drawbacks of this are that the host OS must use systemd as a service manager, and the container can only be executed using root privileges.
To boot a JuJu container:
sudo systemd-nspawn -bD ~/.juju
Related wiki page:
Dependencies
JuJu comes with a very short list of dependencies in order to be installed in most of GNU/Linux distributions. The needed executables in the host OS are:
- bash
- wget or curl
- tar
- mkdir
- chown (for root access only)
The minimum recommended linux kernel is 2.6.0+
Troubleshooting
###Cannot use AUR repository###
- Q: Why do I get the following error when I try to install a package with yaourt?
Cannot find the gzip binary required for compressing man and info pages.
- A: JuJu comes with a very basic number of packages. In order to install packages using yaourt you may need to install the package group base-devel that contains all the essential packages for compiling source code (such as gcc, make, patch, etc):
pacman -S base-devel
###Kernel too old###
- Q: Why do I get the error: "FATAL: kernel too old"?
- A: This is because the executable from the precompiled package cannot properly run if the kernel is old. JuJu contains two different PRoot binaries, and one of them is highly compatible with old linux kernel versions. JuJu will detect which PRoot binary need to be executed but you may need to specify the PRoot -k option if the guest rootfs requires a newer kernel version:
juju -p "-k 3.10"
In order to check if an executable inside JuJu environment can be compatible with the kernel of the host OS just use the file command, for instance:
file ~/.juju/usr/bin/bash
ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked
(uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.32,
BuildID[sha1]=ec37e49e7188ff4030052783e61b859113e18ca6, stripped
From the output you can see what is the minimum recommended Linux kernel version.
###SUID permissions###
- Q: Why I do not have permissions for ping?
ping www.google.com
ping: icmp open socket: Operation not permitted
- A: The ping command uses suid permissions that allow to execute the command using root privileges. The fakeroot mode is not able to execute a command set with suid, and you may need to use root privileges. There are other few commands that have suid permission, you can list the commands from your JuJu environment with the following command:
find /usr/bin -perm +4000
###No characters are visible on a graphic application###
-
Q: Why I do not see any characters in the application I have installed?
-
A: This is probably because there are no fonts installed in the system.
To quick fix this, you can just install a fonts package:
pacman -S gnu-free-fonts
###Differences between filesystem and package ownership###
- Q: Why do I get warning when I install a package using root privileges?
pacman -S systat
...
warning: directory ownership differs on /usr/
filesystem: 1000:100 package: 0:0
...
- A: In these cases the package installation went smoothly anyway. This should happen every time you install package with root privileges since JuJu will try to preserve the JuJu environment by assigning ownership of the files to the real user.
###No servers configured for repository###
- Q: Why I cannot install packages?
pacman -S lsof
Packages (1): lsof-4.88-2
Total Download Size: 0.09 MiB
Total Installed Size: 0.21 MiB
error: no servers configured for repository: core
error: no servers configured for repository: community
error: failed to commit transaction (no servers configured for repository)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.
- A: You need simply to update the mirrorlist file according to your location:
# Uncomment the repository line according to your location
nano /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
pacman -Syy
License
Copyright (c) 2012-2015
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
Author
Filippo Squillace feel.squally@gmail.com