toolbox-init-container - Man Page

Initialize a running container

Examples (TL;DR)

Initialize a running toolbox: toolbox init-container --gid gid --home home --home-link --media-link --mnt-link --monitor-host --shell shell --uid uid --user user

Synopsis

toolbox init-container --gid GID --home HOME --home-link --media-link --mnt-link --shell SHELL --uid UID --user USER

Initializes a newly created container that's running. It is primarily meant to be used as the entry point for all toolbox containers, and must be run inside the container that's to be initialized. It is not expected to be directly invoked by humans, and cannot be used on the host.

A key feature of toolbox containers is their entry point, the toolbox init-container command.

OCI containers are inherently immutable. Configuration options passed through podman create are baked into the definition of the OCI container, and can't be changed later. This means that changes and improvements made in newer versions of Toolbox can't be applied to pre-existing toolbox containers created by older versions of Toolbox. This is avoided by using the entry point to configure the container at runtime.

The entry point of a toolbox container customizes the container to fit the current user by ensuring that it has a user that matches the one on the host, and grants it sudo and root access.

Crucial configuration files, such as /etc/host.conf, /etc/hosts, /etc/localtime, /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/timezone, inside the container are kept synchronized with the host. The entry point also bind mounts various subsets of the host's file system hierarchy to their corresponding locations inside the container to provide seamless integration with the host. This includes /run/libvirt, /run/systemd/journal, /run/udev/data, /var/lib/libvirt, /var/lib/systemd/coredump, /var/log/journal and others.

On some host operating systems, important paths like /home, /media or /mnt are symbolic links to other locations. The entry point ensures that paths inside the container match those on the host, to avoid needless confusion.

Options

The following options are understood:

--gid: GID

Pass GID as the user's numerical group ID from the host to the toolbox container.

--home: HOME

Create a user inside the toolbox container whose login directory is HOME. This option is required.

--home-link: Make /home a symbolic link to /var/home.
--media-link: Make /media a symbolic link to /run/media.
--mnt-link: Make /mnt a symbolic link to /var/mnt.
--monitor-host: Deprecated, does nothing.

Crucial configuration files inside the toolbox container are always kept synchronized with their counterparts on the host, and various subsets of the host's file system hierarchy are always bind mounted to their corresponding locations inside the toolbox container.