gontainer

a lightweight containerization tool

Requirements:

• Linux
• A linux filesystem if you wish to containerize to a linux environment. You can get one from Alpine Linux

Usage:

How to open a ash window, which is like bash (Alpine linux fs)

gontainer -chrt "/home/alpine-fs" run ash 

Example on how to run python (must be installed beforehand, see Gockerfile)

gontainer -chrt "/home/alpine-fs" run python3 

Quickstart

Requirements:

• Gontainer binary
• mnt-vfs.sh shell script
• Linux filesystem image (alpine available at Alpine Linux)
• Root privilidges for all commands

1. Create a blank virtual file system and mount using the mnt-vfs.sh script.

   cd /dev/external-hard-drive
   sudo mnt-vfs.sh VFS 200

   This command will create a directory for the VFS at /mnt/VFS and create a blank image for the filesystem of type ext3 in the working directory called VFS.ext3. The size of the image will be 200MB, trying to store more than that on the filesystem will be impossible. Finally it mounts the newly created VFS.ext3 filesystem image to /mnt/VFS so that the filesystem is ready to use. It also adds an mounting line to /etc/fstab file so that when mounting the filesystem correct parameters are used.

2. Copy linux filesystem image to newly created VFS. For this example the filesystem is located at $HOME/alpine-fs.

   sudo cp -r $HOME/alpine-fs/* /mnt/VFS/

   Check if copy was succesfull:

   # ls /mnt/upsya-vfs
   alpine-fs  bin  dev  etc  home  lib  lost+found  media  mnt  opt  proc  root  run  sbin  srv  sys  tmp  usr  var

3. You may now use gontainer on the image. Open a shell with ash

   sudo gontainer -chrt /mnt/my-vfs run sh

   Look at the Gockerfile for typical first commands on getting a python installation up and running.

To uninstall virtual filesystem delete the line in your /etc/fstab folder corresponding to the virtual filesystem (only one line with second value set to mount directory). Finally delete the mount directory.