Full OS

Run bash on a custom disk image

This tutorial will guide you through creating a custom filesystem from scratch and using it with CheerpX.

1. Create an Ext2 image

We will create an Ext2 image, which will serve as the root filesystem for CheerpX.

To ensure consistency in preparing the image contents, we will use a Dockerfile, you can edit the Dockerfile to add custom packages or change the base to the distro of your choosing. It’s important to select the i386 architecture, since CheerpX does not currently support 64-bit executables.

FROM --platform=i386 i386/debian:buster
ARG DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
RUN useradd -m user && echo "user:password" | chpasswd
RUN echo 'root:password' | chpasswd
CMD [ "/bin/bash" ]

Create a container out of your Dockerfile:

Terminal window
buildah build -f Dockerfile --platform linux/i386 -t cheerpximage
podman create --name cheerpxcontainer cheerpximage

Copy the filesystem from the container into a local directory:

Terminal window
mkdir cheerpXFS
podman cp cheerpxcontainer:/ cheerpXFS/

Create an ext2 image from the specified directory:

Terminal window
mkfs.ext2 -b 4096 -d cheerpXFS/ cheerpXImage.ext2 600M

2. Load CheerpX from your index.html

Loading CheerpX is very simple. Create a new file called index.html and populate it with the following HTML code.

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en" style="height: 100%;">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <title>CheerpX Test</title>
    <script src="https://cxrtnc.leaningtech.com/1.0.0/cx.js"></script>
  </head>
  <body style="height: 100%; background: black;"></body>
</html>

3. Setup a Web server

We recommend always choosing nginx as your Web server when using with CheerpX.

This basic configuration should get you up and running. Please note that CheerpX requires cross-origin isolation, which is enabled via the Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy and Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy headers. For more information see the dedicated Nginx guide.

worker_processes  1;
error_log   nginx_main_error.log info;
pid nginx_user.pid;
daemon off;


events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}


http {
    default_type  application/octet-stream;
    access_log nginx_access.log;
    error_log nginx_error.log info;


    sendfile on;


    server {
        listen 8080;
        server_name localhost;


        gzip on;
        gzip_types application/javascript application/wasm text/plain application/octet-stream;


        charset utf-8;


        location / {
            root .;
            index  index.html index.htm;
            add_header 'Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy' 'same-origin' always;
            add_header 'Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy' 'require-corp' always;
        }
    }
}

Run nginx with the following command:

Terminal window
nginx -p . -c nginx.conf

You can now see your page at http://localhost:8080

Make sure the cheerpXImage.ext2 and the index.html files are both in the same directory where nginx was started.

4. Create a device for the filesystem

Add a new <script> tag with the type="module". Having the script as a module is convenient to use top-level awaits.

Create a HttpBytesDevice from the just created Ext2 image. OverlayDevice makes it possible to make changes to the image, that are overlayed and saved in an IndexedDB persisted by the browser.

<script type="module">
  var blockDevice = await CheerpX.HttpBytesDevice.create("/cheerpXImage.ext2");
  var overlayDevice = await CheerpX.OverlayDevice.create(
    blockDevice,
    await CheerpX.IDBDevice.create("block1"),
  );
</script>

For more information on HttpBytesDevice and OverlayDevice, see our Files and filesystem guide.

5. Create a CheerpX instance

In the same script tag, pass the overlayDevice as a new mount point to the Cheerpx.Linux.create method. This option will initialize CheerpX with the newly created device mounted as /.

const cx = await CheerpX.Linux.create({
  mounts: [{ type: "ext2", path: "/", dev: overlayDevice }],
});

To learn more about Cheerpx.Linux.create, see the CheerpX.Linux.create reference.

6. Attach a console

Create a console element for the output of your program.

<pre id="console" style="height: 100%;"></pre>

And configure CheerpX to use it by adding this snippet at the end of the script.

cx.setConsole(document.getElementById("console"));

Learn more about the console setup in the setConsole reference.

7. Execute a shell

Use the cx.run API to execute the bash shell. This setup is very similar to what we use for WebVM!

await cx.run("/bin/bash", ["--login"], {
  env: [
    "HOME=/home/user",
    "USER=user",
    "SHELL=/bin/bash",
    "EDITOR=vim",
    "LANG=en_US.UTF-8",
    "LC_ALL=C",
  ],
  cwd: "/home/user",
  uid: 1000,
  gid: 1000,
});

Learn more about cx.run in the CheerpX.Linux.run reference.

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