What is vroot?

Have you ever wished you had clean Linux environments of the different versions of your Debian or Ubuntu distribution that you can create quickly and then blow it away just as easily without having to resort to building a virtual machine? A chroot is the way to go! vroot is a set of scripts that helps you conveniently create, manage and use a chroot.

This project was inspired by the yroot utility at Yahoo, so you (former) Yahoos may find this familiar.

Supported Linux Distributions

This utility only works on Debian and Ubuntu at this point. I have used a derivative it on CentOS before but lost that version of the script. I will toss one together again some time, or you can send me a patch.

Configuration

The configuration file, ~/.vrootrc, will be created if you do not already have one. The following is a sample.

#
# the location where your vroots will live
#
VROOT_BASE=${HOME}/.vroot

#
# the default architecture to build vroots in if none is specified
#
VROOT_DEFAULT_ARCHITECTURE=amd64

#
# the default codename to build vroots with if none is specified
#
VROOT_DEFAULT_CODENAME=squeeze

#
# the default distribution to build vroots with if none is specified
#
VROOT_DEFAULT_DISTRIBUTION=Debian

Installation

There is no installation script. You can just copy all the files to a directory in the path and start using them.

Usage

Creating a new vroot

A new vroot can be created with the vroot_create utility. Run it with the --help parameter to see its help page.

vt100x@dev01:~/bin
$ vroot_create --help

vroot_create [options] <vroot_name>

    -h|--help       prints this page
    -a|--arch       architecture, i386 or amd64 [default: amd64]
    -d|--distro     distribution, Ubuntu or Debian [default: Debian]
    -c|--codename   codename of the version [default: squeeze]

The default values for the parameters are set in the configuration file.

The following are some examples will work on both Ubuntu and Debian distributions. Note that you can create Ubuntu vroots in Debian and vice versa.

vt100x@dev01:~/bin
$ vroot_create --arch=amd64 --distro=Ubuntu --codename=precise ub_precise

vt100x@dev01:~/bin
$ vroot_create --arch=i386 --distro=Debian --codename=lenny deb_lenny

vt100x@dev01:~/bin
$ vroot_create --arch=i386 --distro=Ubuntu --codename=natty ub_natty

Using a vroot

Simple! Run vroot <vroot_name> at the command line.

What vroots do I have?

vroot_list shows you what vroots have been created.

How do I delete a vroot?

The best way to delete a vroot is do reboot your machine, then delete the directory of the vroot. Rebooting is a good idea if you have used that vroot because directories might have been mounted in it.

References

1. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebootstrapChroot
2. http://jblevins.org/log/ubuntu-chroot