Motivation

Binary-only applications that were compiled with an earlier libc6 version may be incompatible with a modern ubuntu install. Applications that crash, seg-fault, or exit with an unresolved symbol, but run fine on older linux systems, need an older environment to run.

Overview

This HOWTO will walk through how to create a debian environment that was released in 2002, inside your existing ubuntu system without affecting any of your existing applications or libraries.

Which Applications?

I have used this technique to reduce application crashing with sun-jdk-1.4.2, loki-kohan, and loki-tribes2. Applications that were released as binary-only around 2002 are good candidates for running in a chroot debian woody environment.

Requirements

• chroot requires root access.
• About 128 MB of free disk space in /opt.
• Package debootstrap installed.

 $ sudo apt-get install debootstrap

Installing Debian Woody

Install a base debian woody system into the directory /opt/woody

 $ sudo debootstrap --arch i386 woody /opt/woody http://archive.debian.org/debian

chroot into the new environment and install some common X11 packages.

 $ sudo mount -t proc proc /opt/woody/proc
 $ sudo mount --bind /tmp /opt/woody/tmp
 $ sudo mount --bind /dev /opt/woody/dev
 $ sudo chroot /opt/woody
 # apt-get install xterm
 # exit
 $ sudo umount /opt/woody/proc
 $ sudo umount /opt/woody/tmp
 $ sudo umount /opt/woody/dev

Create woody environment script in /usr/local/bin/woody

CHROOT=/opt/woody
if test "$(whoami)" = "root" ; then
        mount -t proc proc $CHROOT/proc
        mount --bind /tmp $CHROOT/tmp
        mount --bind /dev $CHROOT/dev
        mount --bind /usr/local $CHROOT/usr/local
        mount --bind /home $CHROOT/home
        mount --bind /opt $CHROOT/opt
        cp /etc/passwd /etc/group $CHROOT/etc
        if test "$*" ; then
                chroot $CHROOT su $SUDO_USER -c "$*"
        else
                chroot $CHROOT su $SUDO_USER
        fi
        umount -l $CHROOT/proc
        umount -l $CHROOT/tmp
        umount -l $CHROOT/dev
        umount -l $CHROOT/usr/local
        umount -l $CHROOT/home
        umount -l $CHROOT/opt
else
        gksudo "$0 $*"
fi

Make it executable.

 $ chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/woody

Applications can now be run in the debian woody environment by prefixing their launch command with "woody ".

Here is the contents of a kohan start script that is saved in /usr/local/bin/kohan (it must also be executable).

 woody /usr/local/games/kohan/kohan $*