Toolbox Distrobox Incompatabilities

[noelmiller]

When a distrobox is created, it shows up in the list of Toolbox Containers that you can use. This is an issue because you receive the message below:

nomiller@mirkwood:~$ toolbox enter alma 
Error: container alma is too old and no longer supported 
Recreate it with Toolbox version 0.0.17 or newer.

We need to find a solution either in Distrobox or Toolbox and contribute that way. Otherwise, we can patch our toolbox RPM to fix this issue if we cannot find a solution upstream.

[bsherman]

I'm tinkering with some way to patch toolbox such that it filters out "toolbox" containers which were not created by it.

I think it's too specific for toolbox to have awareness of distrobox, but there are other ways to filter.

[m2Giles]

It's looking for the label "com.github.containers.toolbox"

If it's set at all, even to none. It will show up in the toolbox list. The only way around this was not building the container with that label.

Distrobox on the other hand is looking for the following:

distrobox in the mounts section
distrobox in the labels section

Distrobox will see our toolboxes since we have distrobox in the label usage even when used as quadlet with no mounts.

I tried removing both and now the container will show up in prompt as a regular podman container. However, it won't use the same scarf and will not properly enter if it cannot determine if it's a toolbox or distrobox.

[bsherman]

The only way around this was not building the container with that label.

Clarification, not building the IMAGE with the label.

[bsherman]

This isn't actually completed as the problem described still exists.

With consensus, I think we could close as "won't fix" since it's really something for toolbox/distrobox to sort out, not us.

[HikariKnight]

i agree, it is not really our job to fix this