Hi,

On Thu, 08 Sep 2016 15:39:57 +0200 Johannes Schauer <jo...@debian.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Jun 2016 13:12:16 -0700 Ben Longbons <brlongb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Now that the kernel supports user_namespaces(7), it should be possible to
> > debootstrap in them. Some small changes are needed.
> > 
> > Configuration needed:
> > * Kernel 3.8 or later (3.11 recommended)
> > * Set the sysctl kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone to 1
> >     (Debian-specific "temporary" patch from years ago).
> > * Install the `uidmap` package and add yourself to /etc/sub[ug]id
> > * Install the `lxc` package (for one helper binary only)
> > * Make sure the current directory is searchable by other.
> > 
> > I have attached the necessary changes as a wrapper script,
> 
> I find your script highly interesting!
> 
> A year ago I tried to write a tool that combined the powers of
> lxc-usernsexec(1) and unshare(1) because I was unable to combine them in a way
> that would give me both: correct mapping of user and group ids as well as
> unsharing the user namespace and others. I blogged about it here:
> 
> https://blog.mister-muffin.de/2015/10/25/unshare-without-superuser-privileges/
> 
> and the code is here:
> 
> https://gitlab.mister-muffin.de/josch/user-unshare/blob/master/user-unshare
> 
> I do not know whether what you demonstrated now in shell already worked one
> year ago (in particular I was not aware of the lxc-unshare tool) but your
> script works fine for me. I'm happy that it seems that I don't have to further
> dabble with the perl code I came up with because lxc-usernsexec and 
> lxc-unshare
> seem to be able to do the major grunt work while the rest can be done in 
> simple
> POSIX shell. Thank you!

The disadvantage of the lxc-usernsexec and lxc-unshare tools is, that they are
part of the lxc package. See bug #847491.

> I wonder though: why would this feature be useful for debootstrap? The
> resulting directory would have all the wrong ownership information. The
> directory would only be useful if its user knows exactly how to map the user
> ids between the host and the unshared user namespace.
> 
> So my practical question:
> 
> How do you use the chroots that you create in this fashion? Which commands do
> you use to work with them?

To answer my own question: by packing up the chroot into a tarball. The files
stored inside the tarball will have the correct permission.

I combined the insights from your tool with the Perl script I wrote and cited
above and added support to sbuild-createchroot to run debootstrap without
needing sudo but using Linux user namespaces.

Since debootstrap does not yet offer this functionality itself, I will carry
the code as part of sbuild. See the following two commits for details:

https://salsa.debian.org/debian/sbuild/commit/f21d63cca448a5fc90338319e2ea507623293060?expanded=1
https://salsa.debian.org/debian/sbuild/commit/53e250cdeb0035663833fa0c8ce80adf96d31c03?expanded=1

Thanks!

cheers, josch

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