JuJu

JuJu: the portable GNU/Linux distribution

Description

JuJu is a small and portable GNU/Linux distribution based on ArchLinux.

It 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 just the package managers (called pacman and yaourt) that allows to access to a wide range of packages from ArchLinux 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 a limited repositories (such as CentOS and RedHat).
• Available for x86_64, i686 and ARMv6 architectures but you can build you own image from scratch too!
• All ArchLinux 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

The first time you execute it, the script will download the JuJu image and place it to the default directory ~/.juju. You can change the default directory by changing the environment variable JUJU_HOME.

Installation

Just clone JuJu somewhere (for example in ~/juju):

$ git clone git://github.com/fsquillace/juju ~/juju
$ export PATH=~/juju/bin:$PATH

JuJu can only works on GNU/Linux OS with kernel version greater or equal 2.6.32 on 64 bit 32 bit and ARMv6 architectures.

Advanced usage

You can build a new JuJu image from scratch by running the following command:

# juju -b

In this way 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). Remember that the script to build the image must run in an ArchLinux OS with arch-install-scripts, package-query, git and the base-devel packages installed. To change the build directory just use the JUJU_TMPDIR (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

Dependencies

JuJu comes with a very short list of dependencies in order to be installed in most of GNU/Linux distributions. The dependencies needed in the host OS are:

• bash
• wget or curl
• tar
• mkdir
• linux kernel 2.6.32+

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 always run if the kernel is old. In order to check if the executable can be compatible with the kernel of the host OS just use 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 https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration installed in the system.

To quick fix this, you can just install a fonts package:

    pacman -S gnu-free-fonts

###Missing permissions on removing a package###

• Q: Why I cannot remove the package I have installed?

    pacman -Rsn lsof
    checking dependencies...

    Packages (1): lsof-4.88-1

    Total Removed Size:   0.21 MiB

    error: cannot remove /usr/share/licenses/lsof/LICENSE (Permission denied)
    error: could not remove database entry lsof-4.88-1

• A: This is probably because you have installed the package with root permissions. Since JuJu gives the possibility to install packages either as root or as normal user you need to remember that and remove the package with the right user!

License

Copyright (c) 2012-2014

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

WWW

https://github.com/fsquillace/juju