Is it possible to install and use Flatpak as a non-root user?
Parke
parke.nexus at gmail.com
Sun Feb 2 02:29:17 UTC 2020
Thank you for the information about the (undocumented?) --user flag.
As a non-root user on an Ubuntu 19.10 host, I downloaded and extracted
an Alpine Linux "mini root filesystem". Alpine says this filesystem
is "for use in containers and minimal chroots."
I used a utility I wrote (https://github.com/parke/lxroot) to
unshare() and chroot() into the directory that contained the extracted
Alpine Linux filesystem. (At this point, I am running an Alpine Linux
userland inside a transient Linux user namespace that was dynamically
created by lxroot, all on top of the Ubuntu 19.10 kernel.)
I ran: apk add flatpak
apk reported two incidental(?) errors:
ERROR: Failed to set ownership on
sbin/.apk.184608d476783efa68496465c9d88b3a94879eaeba553671: Invalid
argument
ERROR: Failed to set ownership on
etc/polkit-1/rules.d/.apk.5d6fc4ed50a34374ccfa65d236e32f5448a5b9627be05aec:
Invalid argument
(I believe the user namespace forbids ownership changes.)
I successfully ran: flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists
flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
I ran: flatpak --user install flathub org.gnucash.GnuCash
ID Arch Branch Remote Download
1. [check] org.gnome.Platform x86_64 3.34
2. [check] org.gnome.Platform.Locale x86_64 3.34
3. [check] org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default x86_64 19.08
4. [x] org.freedesktop.Platform.openh264 x86_64 19.08
5. [check] org.gnucash.GnuCash x86_64 stable
6. [check] org.gnucash.GnuCash.Locale x86_64 stable
Warning: org.freedesktop.Platform.openh264 not installed
Installation complete.
flatpak did not provide an explanation as to why openh264 was not installed.
Now, when I try to run GnuCash, I get the following error(s):
$ flatpak --user run org.gnucash.GnuCash
ldconfig: /app/lib/libguile-2.2.so.1.3.0-gdb.scm is not an ELF file -
it has the wrong magic bytes at the start.
error: Invalid group: 1002
$ id
uid=1002 gid=1002 groups=1002,65534(nobody)
Summary: I have not yet found a way to install and run Flatpak
packages as a non-root user.
I may not investigate further, as I have found an alternative,
non-Flatpak method of installing and running GnuCash as a non-root
user.
Thank you for your assistance.
Best,
Parke
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