Idea: overlayfs for user terminal
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Hi,
I think that not being able to install packages with apt in terminal can be frustrating for many new users who expect to escape a locked-down environment like Android, and find complete freedom in Ubuntu Touch. And somehow the first thing we tell them is that they should not do apt commands, it can be frustrating for newcomers and give the impression that it's actually another locked-down system. And we may loose users that way.
The read-only filesystem is a very valid strategy to avoid breaking the system with a few commands.
I would like to propose an idea to keep the main filesystem read only, while allowing the user to play freely in the terminal without risking to break the rest of the system:
Why not mount an overlayfs over "/" and pivot_root in the environment of the user terminal? Like this the user could do whatever they want in their terminal without any risk of breaking the rest of the system (the overlay would not apply outside of the user terminal). On top of that it would reduce the tendency of advanced users (or not so advanced) to remount rw the filesystem to install small utilities with apt. It would also allow for more experimentation on the system with the possibility of a reset at any moment. And it could allow to install deb with less restriction on partition size as the overlay could use more space than the original system partition.
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@pparent Any idea is good to study.
Non-specialist question:
How would this differ from the Libertine environment?
This would be more secure and less resource consumer ? -
@domubpkm said in Idea: overlayfs for user terminal:
How would this differ from the Libertine environment?
To be honest I don't know much about Libertine. But it differs in that you would be able to simply open the terminal and start apt without more overhead, and needing to get used to new concepts like libertine containers.
And for a newcomer it makes the whole difference. You would not need to explain them first why then can't do apt install, and why they need to do complicated things with libertine, with many chances to get them frustrated in the way. If you look at videos of people discovering Ubuntu Touch, more often than not, when they see the terminal the first thing they want to do is apt install
Even I that use the system for more than 6 years, and develop applications for it, never use Libertine, cos it's just too much headache.
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For example Openwrt (Linux distributions for routers) uses this concept of overlayfs to allow the user to modify the image while keeping the original filesystem intact so that we can reset the router at any moment. It works extremely well.
Although what I propose would be slightly different as the overlay would only apply to the user terminal context, and would not affect the system outside of this terminal scope. (And possibly remote access to the terminal via adb/ssh)
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@pparent Thanks. your idea is surely worth asking and developing in the next Q&A.
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@pparent said in Idea: overlayfs for user terminal:
to do complicated things with libertine
if the goal is installing small utilities, and you know about apt update and apt install, all that is needed is to learn to do things like
libertine-container-manager install-package -p ncdu
libertine-container-manager install-package -p fdisk
libertine-container-manager install-package -p apt-fileand then
libertine-launch -i noble bash
to actually use the installed packages.
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@gpatel-fr These small utilities can installed with nix or just copy the executable from the .deb to
.local/bin. -
@ikoz said in Idea: overlayfs for user terminal:
just copy the executable from the .deb to .local/
actually even an utility like ncdu requires a library, unless one downloads a self contained executable from the author's site, but that's not the case for the Ubuntu generated binary. Fiddling with LD_LOAD is more complicated than libertine-container-manager IMO.
Edit: I forgot to say that your approach requires also to apt-download, mkdir, dpkg --extract, cp. It's pushing a bit far the hate of new technology (new as of 2008 in the case of containers).
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@gpatel-fr said in Idea: overlayfs for user terminal:
@pparent said in Idea: overlayfs for user terminal:
to do complicated things with libertine
if the goal is installing small utilities, and you know about apt update and apt install, all that is needed is to learn to do things like
libertine-container-manager install-package -p ncdu
libertine-container-manager install-package -p fdisk
libertine-container-manager install-package -p apt-fileand then
libertine-launch -i noble bash
to actually use the installed packages.
I'm sorry but this is way too complicated for a newcomer that just wants to feel at home by using apt, and that first needs to understand the concept that they can't apt and the concept of Libertine before running these commands. Same applies for "just copy the executable from the .deb to .local/" .
By the way the review from @theprivacydad mentions this complexity for a new user of geting used to new concepts and viarous software sources ( Libretine, Waydroid, snap, openstore)
