toolbox/doc/toolbox.1.md

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% toolbox 1
## NAME
toolbox - Tool for interactive command line environments on Linux
## SYNOPSIS
**toolbox** [*--assumeyes* | *-y*]
[*--help* | *-h*]
[*--log-level LEVEL*]
[*--log-podman*]
[*--verbose* | *-v*]
*COMMAND* [*ARGS*...]
## DESCRIPTION
Toolbx is a tool for Linux, which allows the use of interactive command line
environments for software development and troubleshooting the host operating
system, without having to install software on the host. It is built on top of
Podman and other standard container technologies from OCI.
Toolbx environments have seamless access to the users home directory, the
Wayland and X11 sockets, networking (including Avahi), removable devices (like
USB sticks), systemd journal, SSH agent, D-Bus, ulimits, /dev and the udev
database, etc..
This is particularly useful on OSTree based operating systems like Fedora
CoreOS and Silverblue. The intention of these systems is to discourage
installation of software on the host, and instead install software as (or in)
containers — they mostly don't even have package managers like DNF or YUM.
This makes it difficult to set up a development environment or troubleshoot
the operating system in the usual way.
Toolbx solves this problem by providing a fully mutable container within
which one can install their favourite development and troubleshooting tools,
editors and SDKs. For example, it's possible to do `yum install ansible`
without affecting the base operating system.
However, this tool doesn't *require* using an OSTree based system. It works
equally well on Fedora Workstation and Server, and that's a useful way to
incrementally adopt containerization.
The Toolbx environment is based on an OCI image. On Fedora this is the
`fedora-toolbox` image. This image is used to create a Toolbx container that
offers the interactive command line environment.
Note that Toolbx makes no promise about security beyond whats already
available in the usual command line environment on the host that everybody is
familiar with.
## Supported operating system distributions
By default, Toolbx tries to use an image matching the host operating system
distribution for creating containers. If the host is not supported, then it
falls back to a Fedora image. Supported host operating systems are:
* Arch Linux
* Fedora
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux >= 8.5
* Ubuntu
However, it's possible to create containers for a different distribution
through the use of the `--distro` and `--release` options that are accepted by
the relevant commands, or their counterparts in the configuration file. The
`--distro` flag specifies the name of the distribution, and `--release`
specifies its version. Supported combinations are:
Distro |Release
-------|----------
arch |latest or rolling
fedora |\<release\> or f\<release\> eg., 36 or f36
rhel |\<major\>.\<minor\> eg., 8.5
ubuntu |\<YY\>.\<MM\> eg., 22.04
## USAGE
### Create a Toolbx container:
```
[user@hostname ~]$ toolbox create
Image required to create toolbox container.
Download registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-toolbox:36 (294.1MB)? [y/N]: y
Created container: fedora-toolbox-36
Enter with: toolbox enter
[user@hostname ~]$
```
### Enter the Toolbx container:
```
[user@hostname ~]$ toolbox enter
⬢[user@toolbox ~]$
```
### Remove the Toolbx container:
```
[user@hostname ~]$ toolbox rm fedora-toolbox-36
[user@hostname ~]$
```
## GLOBAL OPTIONS ##
The following options are understood:
**--assumeyes, -y**
Automatically answer yes for all questions.
**--help, -h**
Print a synopsis of this manual and exit.
**--log-level**=*level*
Log messages above specified level: debug, info, warn, error, fatal or panic
(default: error)
**--log-podman**
Show log messages of invocations of Podman based on the logging level specified
by option **log-level**.
**--verbose, -v**
Same as `--log-level=debug`. Use `-vv` to include `--log-podman`.
## COMMANDS
Commands for working with Toolbx containers and images:
**toolbox-create(1)**
Create a new Toolbx container.
**toolbox-enter(1)**
Enter a Toolbx container for interactive use.
**toolbox-help(1)**
Display help information about Toolbx.
**toolbox-init-container(1)**
Initialize a running container.
**toolbox-list(1)**
List existing Toolbx containers and images.
**toolbox-rm(1)**
Remove one or more Toolbx containers.
**toolbox-rmi(1)**
Remove one or more Toolbx images.
**toolbox-run(1)**
Run a command in an existing Toolbx container.
## FILES ##
**toolbox.conf(5)**
Toolbx configuration file.
## SEE ALSO
`podman(1)`, https://github.com/containers/toolbox