Ever since I'm running some niche distros like Void, Solus, I had a problem finding softwares I need in their not-so-large repositories, also I don't like how flatpak and snap works. so i decided to create an Arch Linux chroot environment everytime I distrohop. Why Arch Linux? They have a really, really good repositories, oh and don't mention how big AUR is.
**IMPORTANT**, Make sure you've unmounted everything in chroot environment, it's better to remove the init script and reboot to unmount everything. if you can't reboot for some reason, do :
You may want to add these rules if you want to use Archbox without password (assuming the install prefix is ```/usr/local``` and you're in group ```wheel```) :
Keep in mind that this doesn't resolve service dependencies, so you may need to enable the dependencies manually. you can use ```archboxctl desc <service>``` to read the .service file
##### Post-exec delay
Services are asynchronously started, if some services have some issues when starting together you may want to add post-exec delay.
```
SERVICES=( php-fpm:3 nginx )
```
This will add 3 seconds delay after executing php-fpm.
Use ```archbox-desktop``` to install desktop entries in chroot to host (installed to ```~/.local/share/applications/archbox```), you'll need to add ```sudo``` (or ```doas```) rules to launch archbox without a password.
Instead of opening terminal or installing desktop entries everytime you want to run application inside chroot, you may want to launch rofi inside chroot, install rofi and do :
Mounting ```/run``` somehow breaks NixOS, set ```MOUNT_RUN``` in ```/etc/archbox.conf``` to anything other than ```yes``` to disable mounting ```/run```, then do :
```
archbox --mount-runtime-only
```
after user login to make XDG runtime directory accessible to chroot enviroment. make sure dbus unix:path is in XDG runtime directory too.
Or alternatively if you use WM-only, just disable mounting ```/run``` entirely and manually set XDG_RUNTIME_DIR into ```/tmp``` like ```/tmp/$(whoami)```, this is not recommended if you use systemd, stuffs like Pipewire, Desktop portal, etc may broke.
Although /run is mounted in chroot environment on boot, XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not visible in chroot environment, remounting /run will make it visible. do :
after user login, Also if you use Void Musl, you need to kill every process that runs in XDG_RUNTIME_DIR when you log out, You need to reinstall archbox with ```--exp``` flag and use ```startx-killxdg``` instead of ```startx```, or run :
```
/usr/local/share/archbox/bin/remount_run killxdg
```
on logout. you can put it in ```/etc/gdm/PostSession/Default``` if you use GDM
```pkexec``` is kind of tricky to make it work in chroot, if you use rofi to launch GUI applications in chroot, you may not able to launch any ```.desktop``` files with ```Exec=pkexec...``` in it. If you really want them to work, you can do :
in chroot and prevent pacman from restoring ```/usr/bin/pkexec``` by editing ```NoExtract``` in ```/etc/pacman.conf```.
#### No sudo password in chroot by default.
You could use ```sudo``` in archbox, but you'll have no way to enter the password when doing e.g. ```archbox sudo pacman -Syu```. also you could enter the password if you do ```archbox -e <<(echo $COMMAND)```, but that would disable stdin entirely during $COMMAND.
