Ubuntu core install fails

[wills721]

Describe the bug

error: snap "aws-cli" requires classic confinement which is only available on classic systems

Trying to install aws-cli on Ubuntu Core 24 (arm64) and getting this error above.

Tried under --classic and tried within classic (sudo classic). Same error.

Help?

Regression Issue

• Select this option if this issue appears to be a regression.

Expected Behavior

aws-cli will install

Current Behavior

Fails

Reproduction Steps

Run snap install aws-cli --classic

Possible Solution

No response

Additional Information/Context

No response

CLI version used

Newest desired

Environment details (OS name and version, etc.)

Ubuntu core 24

[marrek-az]

The aws-cli snap requires classic confinement, and there is currently no way around this. Features of the cli like copying files from S3 are difficult to support with strict confinement in a way that provides a predictable experience to the majority of users. This isn’t likely to change soon.

It may be possible for you to rebuild the existing snap with strict confinement with little modification—at least for the v2/stable version.

[wills721]

Any idea how I would go about doing this? Am I the first to use aws-cli on Ubuntu-Core?

[wills721]

Ubuntu Core apparently is not a "classic" system -- so seems I am out of luck with putting aws-cli on any Ubuntu core version?

[wills721]

Even if I try to use classic I get this:
root@thio-lab-6:# sudo classic
(classic)root@thio-lab-6:# sudo snap install aws-cli --classic
error: snap "aws-cli" requires classic confinement which is only available on classic systems
(classic)root@thio-lab-6:~#

[marrek-az]

I'm not surprised you cannot use classic confinement on Ubuntu Core.

The only solution that I can think of would be to "roll your own".

It may be possible to rebuild the snap with snapcraft on a regular Ubuntu LTS system, changing the classic confinement to strict confinement. This is impractical to do for the snap store listing, but you could build it and install your own version. At least, it may be possible for v2/stable. I would not try it with v1/stable. I have not tested this.

The snapcraft.yaml file might already be present in the snap under /snap/aws-cli/current/snap, I think. If not, then it may be easy enough to include it, so refresh your snap in a few days and check again. At present, the snapcraft.yaml is not part of this repo.

[EDIT] all of this assumes that you are using ubuntu core on an architecture supported by the aws-cli binary builds. If not, and you need to build from source, then this will be a lot more complicated.

[wills721]

Sounds like I'm diverging from a known path which is contradictory to using Ubuntu Core -- but the platform I use is the Raspberry Compute Module (4 or 5)

[wills721]

I mean, the Raspberry Compute Modules support Ubuntu Core. You would think AWS would "want" to support this. Ubuntu Core is a better edge OS -- much lighter more modular better at reducing network overhead with OS upgrades (etc).

[adev-code]

Hi @wills721, I have set up my own environment with Ubuntu Core 24 (arm64) and I did not get the same issue. I was able to install AWS CLI from all the available commands listed here : https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/getting-started-install.html .

Have you also tried ? :

$ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-aarch64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"
unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install