Two tensions

  1. Sometimes the contents of the Debian archive isn’t yet sufficient for working in a software ecosystem in which I’d like to work, and I want to use that ecosystem’s package manager which downloads the world into $HOME – e.g. stack, pip, lein and friends.

    But I can’t use such a package manager when $HOME contains my PGP subkeys and other valuable files, and my X session includes Firefox with lots of saved passwords, etc.

  2. I want to run Debian stable on my laptop for purposes of my day job – if I can’t open Emacs on a Monday morning, it’s going to be a tough week.

    But I also want to do Debian development on my laptop, and most of that’s a pain without either Debian testing or Debian unstable.

The solution

Have Propellor provision and boot a systemd-nspawn(1) container running Debian unstable, and start a window manager in that container with $DISPLAY pointing at an X server in vt8. Wooo!

In more detail:

  1. Laptop runs Debian stable. Main account is spwhitton.
  2. Achieve isolation from /home/spwhitton by creating a new user account, spw, that can’t read /home/spwhitton. Also, in X startup scripts for spwhitton, run xhost -local:.
  3. debootstrap a Debian unstable chroot into /var/lib/container/develacc.
  4. Install useful desktop things like task-british-desktop into /var/lib/container/develacc.
  5. Boot /var/lib/container/develacc as a systemd-nspawn container called develacc.
  6. dm-tool switch-to-greeter to start a new X server on vt8. Login as spw.
  7. Propellor installs a script enter-develacc which uses nsenter(1) to run commands in the develacc container. Create a further script enter-develacc-i3 which does

     /usr/local/bin/enter-develacc sh -c "cd ~spw; DISPLAY=$1 su spw -c i3"
    
  8. Finally, /home/spw/.xsession starts i3 in the chroot pointed at vt8’s X server:

     sudo /usr/local/bin/enter-develacc-i3 $DISPLAY
    
  9. Phew. May now pip install foo. And Ctrl-Alt-F7 to go back to my secure session. That session can read and write /home/spw, so I can dgit push etc.

The Propellor configuration

develaccProvisioned :: Property (HasInfo + DebianLike)
develaccProvisioned = propertyList "develacc provisioned" $ props
    & User.accountFor (User "spw")
    & Dotfiles.installedFor (User "spw")
    & User.hasDesktopGroups (User "spw")
    & withMyAcc "Sean has 'spw' group"
        (\u -> tightenTargets $ User.hasGroup u (Group "spw"))
    & withMyHome "Sean's homedir chmodded"
        (\h -> tightenTargets $ File.mode h 0O0750)
    & "/home/spw" `File.mode` 0O0770

    & "/etc/sudoers.d/spw" `File.hasContent`
        ["spw ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/local/bin/enter-develacc-i3"]
    & "/usr/local/bin/enter-develacc-i3" `File.hasContent`
        [ "#!/bin/sh"
        , ""
        , "echo \"$1\" | grep -q -E \"^:[0-9.]+$\" || exit 1"
        , ""
        , "/usr/local/bin/enter-develacc sh -c \\"
        , "\t\"cd ~spw; DISPLAY=$1 su spw -c i3\""
        ]
    & "/usr/local/bin/enter-develacc-i3" `File.mode` 0O0755

    -- we have to start xss-lock outside of the container in order that it
    -- can interface with host logind
    & "/home/spw/.xsession" `File.hasContent`
        [ "if [ -e \"$HOME/local/wallpaper.png\" ]; then"
        , "    xss-lock -- i3lock -i $HOME/local/wallpaper.png &"
        , "else"
        , "    xss-lock -- i3lock -c 3f3f3f -n &"
        , "fi"
        , "sudo /usr/local/bin/enter-develacc-i3 $DISPLAY"
        ]

    & Systemd.nspawned develAccChroot
    & "/etc/network/if-up.d/develacc-resolvconf" `File.hasContent`
        [ "#!/bin/sh"
        , ""
        , "cp -fL /etc/resolv.conf \\"
        ,"\t/var/lib/container/develacc/etc/resolv.conf"
        ]
    & "/etc/network/if-up.d/develacc-resolvconf" `File.mode` 0O0755
  where
    develAccChroot = Systemd.debContainer "develacc" $ props
        -- Prevent propellor passing --bind=/etc/resolv.conf which
        -- - won't work when system first boots as WLAN won't be up yet,
        --   so /etc/resolv.conf is a dangling symlink
        -- - doesn't keep /etc/resolv.conf up-to-date as I move between
        --   wireless networks
        ! Systemd.resolvConfed

        & osDebian Unstable X86_64
        & Apt.stdSourcesList
        & Apt.suiteAvailablePinned Experimental 1
        -- use host apt cacher (we assume I have that on any system with
        -- develaccProvisioned)
        & Apt.proxy "http://localhost:3142"

        & Apt.installed [ "i3"
                , "task-xfce-desktop"
                , "task-british-desktop"
                , "xss-lock"
                , "emacs"
                , "caffeine"
                , "redshift-gtk"
                , "gnome-settings-daemon"
                ]

        & Systemd.bind "/home/spw"
        -- note that this won't create /home/spw because that is
        -- bind-mounted, which is what we want
        & User.accountFor (User "spw")
        -- ensure that spw inside the container can read/write ~spw
        & scriptProperty
            [ "usermod -u $(stat --printf=\"%u\" /home/spw) spw"
            , "groupmod -g $(stat --printf=\"%g\" /home/spw) spw"
            ] `assume` NoChange

Comments

I first tried using a traditional chroot. I bound lots of /dev into the chroot and then tried to start lightdm on vt8. This way, the whole X server would be within the chroot; this is in a sense more straightforward and there is not the overhead of booting the container. But lightdm refuses to start.

It might have been possible to work around this, but after reading a number of reasons why chroots are less good under systemd as compared with sysvinit, I thought I’d try systemd-nspawn, which I’ve used before and rather like in general. I couldn’t get lightdm to start inside that, either, because systemd-nspawn makes it difficult to mount enough of /dev for X servers to be started. At that point I realised that I could start only the window manager inside the container, with the X server started from the host’s lightdm, and went from there.

The security isn’t that good. You shouldn’t be running anything actually untrusted, just stuff that’s semi-trusted.

  • chmod 750 /home/spwhitton, xhost -local: and the argument validation in enter-develacc-i3 are pretty much the extent of the security here. The containerisation is to get Debian sid on a Debian stable machine, not for isolation

  • lightdm still runs X servers as root even though it’s been possible to run them as non-root in Debian for a few years now (there’s a wishlist bug against lightdm)

I now have a total of six installations of Debian on my laptop’s hard drive … four traditional chroots, one systemd-nspawn container and of course the host OS. But this is easy to manage with propellor!

Bugs

Screen locking is weird because logind sessions aren’t shared into the container. I have to run xss-lock in /home/spw/.xsession before entering the container, and the window manager running in the container cannot have a keybinding to lock the screen (as it does in my secure session). To lock the spw X server, I have to shut my laptop lid, or run loginctl lock-sessions from my secure session, which requires entering the root password.

Usage notes

  • Be sure you are actually logging into the container and not just i3 session on host! Check that lightdm’s selected session is “Default X session”

  • enter-develacc is the convenient way to get root. =machinectl login= won’t work well because pts/0 is not listed in /etc/securetty, so won’t be able to login as root.

  • Don’t reboot with machinectl. Bricks container and have to reboot host to get it going again. Instead, try this (barely/un-tested):

    • systemctl restart systemd-nspawn@develacc.service.d
  • /tmp is volatile; use /home/spw/tmp to put stuff in container