Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
  • Forum
  • Tech Help
  • Unable to get distrobox to run from application link
Unable to get distrobox to run from application link
Michael_V Sep 17, 2022
My System Info

Linux Distribution: steam os 3.3.1
Desktop Environment: KDE plasma 5.23.5
Graphics Card: steamdeck apu
GPU Driver Version: ?

Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes/No] yes

If this is to do with Steam, please add your system read-out from Steam -> Help -> System Information (please put that into Pastebin/Gist as linked above!):

If this is not Steam, you can still give us a system readout using inxi with "inxi -SbCGxx" in terminal (please put that into Pastebin/Gist as linked above!):

You can note your issue below here

Hi, so I was following the GOL article to get distrobox up and running so I can use Vivaldi on my steamdeck, which I've had for day or so. I was able to get it running from the command line when I access it directly, both the Ubuntu box(copied from the article), and Vivaldi, but that's where the video and article end. So I tried to use the command found on distrobox's github page to create a link so I could hook that into steam, "distrobox-export --app Vivaldi" and it creates the link with proper icons, and the script works fine when I copypaste it into cmd, but when I click on it it doesn't do anything. Same thing with the icon made for the Ubuntu box, but that one flashes a terminal on screen for a second before failing.
I'm probably missing something obvious, but if y'all could help this Linux noob, that'd be greatly appreciated.


Note any particular steps to reproduce it below here
Michael_V Sep 19, 2022
Alright, so I've done some more digging. I went into the link for vivaldi and clicked the tick for 'is executable', that didn't fix it. then i went in and clicked on 'run in terminal', and 'dont close terminal'. this is what it shows, despite running that same script myself in the terminal and running fine.

Missing dependency: we need a container manager.
Please install one of podman or docker.
You can follow the documentation on:
man distrobox-compatibility
or:
https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/compatibility.md

An error occurred

Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated.
Michael_V Sep 25, 2022
This is the script which the link uses to run Vivaldi, which works fine if I put it directly into the terminal.

"/home/deck/.local/bin/distrobox-enter -n ubuntu-20-04 -- ' /usr/bin/vivaldi-stable %U'"

Any help is appreciated!
Pengling Sep 26, 2022
I admit that this is a stupid question on my part, but I also know that I've occasionally managed to miss a line or two when I've followed tutorials for various things in the past, so I'm going to ask it just in case: Per the error-message in your second post, do you have podman or docker installed?

I know that the written article here on GamingOnLinux mentions using podman for this, and I presume that it's meant to do what you want it to do here. I think it would be worth narrowing down whether it's installed and not working, or if it was accidentally missed or somehow managed to fail to install.

Disclaimer: I don't have a Steam Deck - I just happened to check out the GOL articles about Distrobox because I found them interesting and potentially useful.

Last edited by Pengling on 26 September 2022 at 5:03 am UTC
Michael_V Sep 26, 2022
Quoting: PenglingI admit that this is a stupid question on my part, but I also know that I've occasionally managed to miss a line or two when I've followed tutorials for various things in the past, so I'm going to ask it just in case: Per the error-message in your second post, do you have podman or docker installed?

I know that the written article here on GamingOnLinux mentions using podman for this, and I presume that it's meant to do what you want it to do here. I think it would be worth narrowing down whether it's installed and not working, or if it was accidentally missed or somehow managed to fail to install.

Disclaimer: I don't have a Steam Deck - I just happened to check out the GOL articles about Distrobox because I found them interesting and potentially useful.

Don't worry, obvious fixes are always the first thing to check. I've been able to run it through the script above, and the files are there, so I'm assuming so.
unreinstall Sep 30, 2022
Having the same issues with the ubuntu shortcut, and trying to run anything inside of the container from the host without entering the commands manually in the terminal.

Was getting this error also whenever I tried to run 'distrobox list'

WARN[0000] "/" is not a shared mount, this could cause issues or missing mounts with rootless containers

Running this command: (found from: https://github.com/containers/buildah/issues/3726)
sudo mount --make-rshared /
seemed to fix the error, but it didn't fix everything. 'distrobox stop' for example gives you a permission denied error, and won't let you stop it. Installing programs that aren't in /usr/bin also won't allow you to run the programs by typing in their names. For example, installing Warzone 2100 puts the executable in /usr/games/, and trying to run the command 'warzone2100' to run it just returns a "command not found" error. But when you actually navigate to the file location and execute it in the CLI it runs perfectly fine.

Distrobox implementation on SteamOS is far from perfect and is extremely buggy as of now. Hopefully some of these issues may be fixed in the future, but for now its practically unusable as it is very tedious to do anything.
boxxcar Oct 15, 2022
Quoting: Michael_V
Quoting: PenglingI admit that this is a stupid question on my part, but I also know that I've occasionally managed to miss a line or two when I've followed tutorials for various things in the past, so I'm going to ask it just in case: Per the error-message in your second post, do you have podman or docker installed?

I know that the written article here on GamingOnLinux mentions using podman for this, and I presume that it's meant to do what you want it to do here. I think it would be worth narrowing down whether it's installed and not working, or if it was accidentally missed or somehow managed to fail to install.

Disclaimer: I don't have a Steam Deck - I just happened to check out the GOL articles about Distrobox because I found them interesting and potentially useful.

Don't worry, obvious fixes are always the first thing to check. I've been able to run it through the script above, and the files are there, so I'm assuming so.

Don't know if you ever figured it out, but the fix is to put $PATH (set in the DistroBox install instructions) into the KDE env directory (~/.config/plasma-workspace/env/). I then sourced it in my .bashrc, but then the DistroBox $PATH is there twice.
Problem is that KDE has no clue to use the updated $PATH because it's not sourcing .bashrc.
Source: https://userbase.kde.org/Session_Environment_Variables
Michael_V Oct 16, 2022
Quoting: boxxcar
Quoting: Michael_V
Quoting: PenglingI admit that this is a stupid question on my part, but I also know that I've occasionally managed to miss a line or two when I've followed tutorials for various things in the past, so I'm going to ask it just in case: Per the error-message in your second post, do you have podman or docker installed?

I know that the written article here on GamingOnLinux mentions using podman for this, and I presume that it's meant to do what you want it to do here. I think it would be worth narrowing down whether it's installed and not working, or if it was accidentally missed or somehow managed to fail to install.

Disclaimer: I don't have a Steam Deck - I just happened to check out the GOL articles about Distrobox because I found them interesting and potentially useful.

Don't worry, obvious fixes are always the first thing to check. I've been able to run it through the script above, and the files are there, so I'm assuming so.

Don't know if you ever figured it out, but the fix is to put $PATH (set in the DistroBox install instructions) into the KDE env directory (~/.config/plasma-workspace/env/). I then sourced it in my .bashrc, but then the DistroBox $PATH is there twice.
Problem is that KDE has no clue to use the updated $PATH because it's not sourcing .bashrc.
Source: https://userbase.kde.org/Session_Environment_Variables

Thank you! I had just about given up on it, and am using another, sub-optimal solution instead. I did what you said, and was able to fix the inability to find pacman, but then this came up,

"Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified
[22970:22970:1015/201938.072619:ERROR:ozone_platform_x11.cc(247)] Missing X server or $DISPLAY
[22970:22970:1015/201938.072660:ERROR:env.cc(226)] The platform failed to initialize. Exiting.

An error occurred"

I'm not sure what went wrong, any help you can provide?
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
Login / Register

Or login with...
Sign in with Steam Sign in with Google
Social logins require cookies to stay logged in.
Register Forgot Login?
★ Support Us
Popular this week
Search or view by category
Contact
Buy Games
Buy games with our affiliate / partner links:
Latest Comments
Latest Forum Posts
Misc