Installs Arch Linux inside a chroot enviroment.

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 enviroment everytime I distrohop. Why Arch Linux? They have a really, really good repositories, oh and don't mention how big AUR is.

It's pretty easy, just run install.sh as root.

Before creating chroot enviroment, edit your username in /etc/archbox.conf, then do :

sudo archbox --create <archlinux tarball download link>

Execute /usr/local/share/archbox/bin/archboxinit on boot. either create an init service, or create a @reboot cronjob.

IMPORTANT, Make sure you've unmounted everything in chroot enviroment, if you're unsure which partitions must be unmounted, remove the init script and reboot, then delete the folder.

To enter chroot, do :

archbox --enter

To execute commands inside chroot envirotment, do :

archbox <command>

for example, to update chroot, do :

archbox sudo pacman -Syu

You may want to add this if you don't want to run archbox chroot without password :

%wheel  ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/local/share/archbox/bin/archbox,/usr/local/share/archbox/bin/copyresolv,/usr/local/share/archbox/bin/remount_run

permit nopass :wheel as root cmd /usr/local/share/archbox/bin/archbox
permit nopass :wheel as root cmd /usr/local/share/archbox/bin/copyresolv
permit nopass :wheel as root cmd /usr/local/share/archbox/bin/remount_run

Use servicectl command to manage systemd services. More info here

To enable service on host boot, in archbox do :

sudo servicectl enable <service name>

To start services immediately, in archbox do :

sudo servicectl start <service name>

This isn't actually uses systemd to start services, rather it parses systemd .service files and executes it.

Instead of opening terminal everytime you want to run application inside chroot, you may want to launch rofi inside chroot, install rofi and do :

archbox rofi -show drun

If you use bash with nerd font you could add a nice little Arch Linux icon in your prompt, add :

[[ -e /etc/arch-release ]] && export PS1=" $PS1"

to your ~/.bashrc

Edit ENV_VAR in /etc/archbox.conf. For example, if you want to use qt5ct as Qt5 theme, edit it like this :

ENV_VAR="QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct"

An example with multiple enviroment variables.

ENV_VAR="QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct GTK_CSD=0 LD_PRELOAD=/var/home/lemniskett/git_repo/gtk3-nocsd/libgtk3-nocsd.so.0"

Although /run is mounted in chroot enviroment on boot, XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not visible in chroot enviroment, remounting /run will make it visible. do :

archbox --remount-run

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, if you use startx you need to reinstall archbox with --exp flag and use startx-killxdg instead of startx. Tested in Void Linux musl and Alpine Linux.

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 :

sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/pkexec

in chroot and prevent pacman from restoring /usr/bin/pkexec by editing NoExtract in /etc/pacman.conf.

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.