User other than root

[mukhtharcm]

How to create a user other than root in proot ubuntu?
I really dont want to mess up with my installation.

[ghost]

How to create a user other than root

useradd, then su/sudo for switching.

[mukhtharcm]

How to create a user other than root

useradd, then su/sudo for switching.

Is there any way to directly login to non root user?

[ghost]

It's simple. you need to add the login command inside .bashrc file

eg:
echo "exec su - username" >> .bashrc

But I'm not sure there's a chance that if you type exit it keeps logging in back

[ghost]

Is there any way to directly login to non root user?

I hope you have read the help information of proot-distro login - this command allows to redefine login command and use something else instead of just root shell.

Try something like proot-distro login ubuntu -- su - username

[jj-sallo]

Try something like proot-distro login ubuntu -- su - username

This will result in tty errors, making it impossible to use programs like emacs and breaking things all around.

For example, trying to start emacs results in: emacs: Could not open file: /dev/tty

you need to add the login command inside .bashrc file

This works, but only when --termux-home is not specified.

Maybe adding a flag to login that switches --root-id to --change-id=uid:gid is a better option?

[ghost]

This will result in tty errors

On your device maybe. Never seen such issue on any of mine.

trying to start emacs results in: emacs: Could not open file: /dev/tty

I can't reproduce that. Emacs works perfectly as well as /dev/tty accessible. See below:

Maybe adding a flag to login that switches --root-id to --change-id=uid:gid is a better option?

su handles things better.

[jj-sallo]

Seems like it's specific to Ubuntu-18.04.

Worked fine in Ubuntu 20.04. Haven't tried other distros.

I also tried to add a --user flag to login as described before and it worked fine in Ubuntu-18.04. Will upload a fork to Github soon.

Why is su preferred, if I may ask?

[ghost]

Why is su preferred, if I may ask?

Because su is alternate implementation of /bin/login, transparently configures appropriate environment vars for user and handles PAM modules.

[vmobilez]

proot-distro login --user username distro

example username eric, distro ubuntu-20.04

proot-distro login --user eric ubuntu-20.04