A systemd-based chroot done right

[MagicMuscleMan]

Component

No response

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

On an amd64 system I am always frustrated when I need to chroot into a Raspberry Pi image. I need to remember copying qemu-arm-static over and mention it in the chroot command.

Then I realize, that I need to open another shell where I need to mount most of the pseudo file systems underlying /dev or /sys which is hard to remember and is still full of trouble.

Describe the solution you'd like

I am convinced that systemd could provide both a more convenient and a more secure command. This would be similar to run0 replacing sudo in a lot of cases.

Systemd can auto-detect when chrooting into a file system hierarchy which a non-native ABI. It can also automatically (bind)mount the pseudo file systems. There are probably different use cases for these features which can be made available via command line options.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot more ways how to make chrooting more convenient and more secure.

Describe alternatives you've considered

A completely separate tool independent of systemd would be possible. However, systemd knows so much about file system mounts, container and basic system operations, that it really seems to be the natural environment to create such a tool.

The systemd version you checked that didn't have the feature you are asking for

No response

[qwertviop]

Then I realize, that I need to open another shell where I need to mount most of the pseudo file systems underlying /dev or /sys which is hard to remember and is still full of trouble.

Since you are already linking the Arch wiki: the package arch-install-scripts contains the tool arch-chroot which does all the mounting (and more) for you and is available on Debian and Fedora too. So you'd have to copy qemu-arm-static to the image once and then just run arch-chroot <mountpoint> /bin/qemu-arm-static /bin/bash whenever you want a chroot.

[bluca]

This is what nspawn does by default already?

[MagicMuscleMan]

Thanks, to both of you, @FelixPehla and @bluca . It seems that the functionality is already available. with these two options.