fakechroot For Linux

fakechroot is a completely free and open source command-line software project that has been designed from the offset to provide all the necessary tools for helping users create fake chroot environments under GNU/Linux operating systems.

Actually, the fakechroot project has been designed as a variant of the debootstrap utility, which is used on Debian/Ubuntu-based distributions for setting up new systems. The software is compatible with computers supporting either of the 32 or 64-bit instruction set architectures.

A fake chroot environment is a Linux environment that allows unprivileged users (users that do not have the necessary rights to execute administrative commands) to run programs that require system administrator (root) privileges.

For example, with fakechroot you will be able to create a chrooted development environment where you can build packages using a standard user account (non-root). For more details about how this tool works or if you want to see a real-life example, please check the project’s homepage (see link at the end of the article).

To install and use the fakechroot program on your GNU/Linux distribution, you will have to first download the latest release from Softpedia or from the project’s official website, save the archive on a location of your choice (preferably your Home directory), and unpack it.

Then, open a Terminal app, move to the location where you’ve extracted the archive file (e.g. cd /home/softpedia/fakechroot-2.17.2), run the ‘./configure && make’ command to configure and compile the program, followed by the ‘sudo make install’ command to install it system wide.

After installation, type the ‘fakechroot --help’ command to view the usage message and learn how to use the program to create a chrooted environment and start installing packages without a root account.