toolbox(1)

1toolbox(1)                  General Commands Manual                 toolbox(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       toolbox - Tool for containerized command line environments on Linux
7
8

SYNOPSIS

10       toolbox [--assumeyes | -y]
11               [--help | -h]
12               [--log-level LEVEL]
13               [--log-podman]
14               [--verbose | -v]
15               COMMAND [ARGS...]
16
17

DESCRIPTION

19       Toolbox  is a tool for Linux operating systems, which allows the use of
20       containerized command line environments. It is built on top  of  Podman
21       and other standard container technologies from OCI.
22
23
24       This  is particularly useful on OSTree based operating systems like Fe‐
25       dora CoreOS and Silverblue. The intention of these systems is  to  dis‐
26       courage installation of software on the host, and instead install soft‐
27       ware as (or in) containers — they mostly don't even have  package  man‐
28       agers like DNF or YUM.  This makes it difficult to set up a development
29       environment or install tools for debugging in the usual way.
30
31
32       Toolbox solves this problem by  providing  a  fully  mutable  container
33       within  which one can install their favourite development and debugging
34       tools, editors and SDKs. For example, it's possible to do  yum  install
35       ansible without affecting the base operating system.
36
37
38       However,  this  tool  doesn't  require using an OSTree based system. It
39       works equally well on Fedora Workstation and Server, and that's a  use‐
40       ful way to incrementally adopt containerization.
41
42
43       The toolbox environment is based on an OCI image. On Fedora this is the
44       fedora-toolbox image. This image is used to create a toolbox  container
45       that  seamlessly  integrates  with  the rest of the operating system by
46       providing access to the user's home  directory,  the  Wayland  and  X11
47       sockets,  networking  (including  Avahi),  removable  devices (like USB
48       sticks), systemd journal, SSH agent, D-Bus, ulimits, /dev and the  udev
49       database, etc..
50
51

Supported operating system distributions

53       By  default,  Toolbox tries to use an image matching the host operating
54       system distribution for creating containers. If the host  is  not  sup‐
55       ported,  then it falls back to a Fedora image. Supported host operating
56       systems are:
57
58
59              • Fedora
60
61              • Red Hat Enterprise Linux >= 8.5
62
63
64
65       However, it's possible to create containers for a  different  distribu‐
66       tion through the use of the --distro and --release options that are ac‐
67       cepted by the relevant commands, or their counterparts in the  configu‐
68       ration  file. The --distro flag specifies the name of the distribution,
69       and --release specifies its version. Supported combinations are:
70
71
72       ┌───────┬────────────────────────────────────────┐
73       │Distro │ Release                                │
74       ├───────┼────────────────────────────────────────┤
75       │fedora │ <release> or f<release> eg., 36 or f36 │
76       ├───────┼────────────────────────────────────────┤
77       │rhel   │ <major>.<minor> eg., 8.5               │
78       └───────┴────────────────────────────────────────┘
79

GLOBAL OPTIONS

81       The following options are understood:
82
83
84       --assumeyes, -y
85
86
87       Automatically answer yes for all questions.
88
89
90       --help, -h
91
92
93       Print a synopsis of this manual and exit.
94
95
96       --log-level=level
97
98
99       Log messages above specified level: debug, info, warn, error, fatal  or
100       panic (default: error)
101
102
103       --log-podman
104
105
106       Show  log  messages of invocations of Podman based on the logging level
107       specified by option log-level.
108
109
110       --verbose, -v
111
112
113       Same as --log-level=debug. Use -vv to include --log-podman.
114
115

COMMANDS

117       Commands for working with toolbox containers and images:
118
119
120       toolbox-create(1)
121
122
123       Create a new toolbox container.
124
125
126       toolbox-enter(1)
127
128
129       Enter a toolbox container for interactive use.
130
131
132       toolbox-help(1)
133
134
135       Display help information about Toolbox.
136
137
138       toolbox-init-container(1)
139
140
141       Initialize a running container.
142
143
144       toolbox-list(1)
145
146
147       List existing toolbox containers and images.
148
149
150       toolbox-rm(1)
151
152
153       Remove one or more toolbox containers.
154
155
156       toolbox-rmi(1)
157
158
159       Remove one or more toolbox images.
160
161
162       toolbox-run(1)
163
164
165       Run a command in an existing toolbox container.
166
167

FILES

169       toolbox.conf(5)
170
171
172       Toolbox configuration file.
173
174