Re: Debian Linux in Chroot

On 7/31/07, Matthew K Poer <matthewpoer@gmail.com> wrote:
> My understanding of chroot is extremely limited, right now. I have searched
> around, but can anyone point me to anything specific that they know to be a
> good tutorial/explanation or how chroot works and what its capabilities are?

chroot is a system call that causes all descended processes to treat a directory in the filesystem as the root directory (/). When you do this to an interactive Bash shell, you then have the ability to launch programs and do development work, etc. from this chroot.

Debian has good tools for doing this sort of thing--debootstrap and friends can install a new system (etch, lenny, sid, and more) in a folder for you, and you can even install an entire 32-bit userland on a 64-bit system, which is useful for running 32-bit Firefox with stuff like the non-free Adobe Flash plugin (FYI-if you're going to point out nspluginwrapper, please also tell me how to make sound with PulseAudio work in that setup). Then there are tools like schroot (apt-get install schroot) which can be configured to launch programs from inside the chroot in one command line, complete with 32-bit uname() emulation if so desired.

-- 
Andrew Barr

We matter more than pounds and pence,
your economic theory makes no sense...


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