distrobox/docs/distrobox_custom.md

• Distrobox
  • Useful tips

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Create a dedicated distrobox container

Distrobox wants to be as generic as possible in supporting OCI images, but sometimes there could be some problems:

• The image you want to use is too old and the package manager mirrors are down
• The image you want to use has not a supported package manager or no package manager at all

Requirements

The only required programs that must be available in the container so that distrobox-init won't start the installation are:

• the $SHELL you use (bash, zsh, fish etc etc)
• findutils
• ncurses
• procps
• shadow
• sudo
• libvte
• util-linux (that provides the mount command)

If all those dependencies are met, then the distrobox-init will simply skip the installation process and work as expected.

To test if all packages requirements are met just run this in the container:

if ! command -v mount || ! command -v mount || ! command -v passwd ||
 ! command -v sudo || ! command -v useradd || ! command -v usermod ||
 ! command -v "${SHELL}"; then

 echo "Missing dependencies"

fi