Endless OS uses a read-only, immutable root filesystem. Advanced users and software developers may need more flexibility for certain tasks. One way to do this is to use toolbox to create a Debian container within your Endless OS installation, which provides command line access to a Debian environment, and all usual Debian tools such as apt-get.
One feature of toolbox is that your home directory is made available within the container. It is therefore very easy to share your files between your container and the host Endless OS.
Create a file named Dockerfile.debian with the following contents
FROM docker.io/library/debian:testing
LABEL com.github.containers.toolbox="true" \
com.github.debarshiray.toolbox="true"
RUN apt-get update && \
apt-get -y install sudo libcap2-bin && \
apt-get clean
RUN sed -i -e 's/ ALL$/ NOPASSWD:ALL/' /etc/sudoers
RUN touch /etc/localtime
RUN echo VARIANT_ID=container >> /etc/os-release
CMD /bin/bash
Open a Terminal which will be used to run the following commands. Administrator access is not required.
Build the image with:
podman build -t debian-toolbox -f Dockerfile.debian
Create the toolbox container by running:
toolbox create -i localhost/debian-toolbox:latest
toolbox enter -c debian-toolbox-latesttoolbox), you can verify with e.g.:dsd@toolbox:~$ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux bullseye/sid"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
[...]
exit to exit the container and return to the Endless shell environment.