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Dima
Asked: 2010-08-16 09:56:11 +0800 CST

How to start GNOME session from chainroot?

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I have used cowbuilder to set-up a chainroot with ubuntu+1 (essentially minimal ubuntu installation in a sub-folder, which you can "change" into, for example for building packages in a clean environment).

How can I start gnome-session from there? Ideally I want it to appear on a new VT. I hope to achieve poor-man's virtualisation ;-)

virtualization

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You should be able to do this with a combination of startx and /etc/X11/Xsession, as long as you've got the necessary trees bind-mounted (I'd guess that you'll need /dev, /sys, and /proc)

    Chroot into your… chroot and run

    sudo startx bash

    which should give you an X term with a shell. To start a GNOME session you can simply run

    /etc/X11/Xsession

    from that shell.

    You should be able to get this on the VT of your choice; check out the man page for startx for this, and other potentially interesting options.

    Note that this doesn't make for a secure chroot - since /proc and /sys and /dev are mounted in the chroot a sufficiently advanced malicious user break out of the chroot with ease.

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  2. I have used such a setup a long a time ago. I believe it was just as simple as starting X from the chroot specyfing a different display name: 

    startx -- :1

    Switch to it with: CTRL-ALT-F9

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