Help With FUSE Overlay-fs on Gentoo (OpenRC)

[ThisNekoGuy]

• https://gist.github.com/filips123/29fb511a01ee8016a927a614f32979d3#non-systemd-os

The guide for doing this on non-systemd systems doesn't explain two things:

1. replacing %RUNTIME-PATH% with the path to your normal Firefox runtime
   1b. This doesn't explain where the "normal FireFox runtime" is located (I use LibreWolf)
2. When logging out, your script should:
   2b. Doesn't explain how to unmount on logout, per user $HOME path being logged out (no absolute paths)
   2c. Doesn't explain how to destroy the upper/ and work/ directories on log out

Can I get some clarification on these issues? (Also assuming the script is supposed to be in /etc/profile.d/)

[filips123]

This doesn't explain where the "normal FireFox runtime" is located (I use LibreWolf)

It is where your Firefox/LibreWolf is installed. So, for LibreWolf, that is probably /usr/lib/librewolf or /usr/lib64/librewolf.

Doesn't explain how to unmount on logout

It depends on your init system. For systemd, it's just ExecStop. For OpenRC, there is probably also a way to run something when the service stops.

Doesn't explain how to destroy the upper/ and work/ directories on log out

You can just remove them.

Also, I'm not sure if this will work, but you can try to completely skip that logging out part. Maybe the OS will automatically unmount the directories on logout, but I'm not sure.

[ThisNekoGuy]

firefoxpwa runtime patch seems to copy the files from /usr/share/firefoxpwa/userchrome/runtime.

Terminal output:
firefoxpwa runtime patch

22:13:49 [INFO] Patching the runtime
22:13:49 [INFO] Runtime patched!

ls $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/firefoxpwa/overlayfs

upper/  work/

ls $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/firefoxpwa/overlayfs/upper/

_autoconfig.cfg  defaults/

ls $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/firefoxpwa/overlayfs/work

work/

ls $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/firefoxpwa/overlayfs/work/work/ -> (Blank output)

[filips123]

So, it seems that fuse-overlayfs doesn't work for some reason. I think that fuse-overlayfs requires some additional system dependencies, do you have them installed? Please also check if it works if you try to use it for other things than PWAsForFirefox, maybe try some examples from here or here.

[ThisNekoGuy]

Gentoo compiles fuse-overlayfs from source, and the dependencies are still on my system, so I'd think I have the proper dependencies already?

And for reference, this is what my login script looks like:

login.sh

#!/bin/bash

if [ "$(id -u)" -gt 0 ] && [ -f /usr/bin/fuse-overlayfs ] && [ -f /usr/lib64/librewolf/native-messaging-hosts/firefoxpwa.json ]; then

    if [ ! -d "$HOME/.local/share/firefoxpwa/runtime" ]; then
        mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/share/firefoxpwa/runtime"
    fi

    mkdir -p "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/firefoxpwa/overlayfs/upper"; mkdir -p "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/firefoxpwa/overlayfs/work"

    fuse-overlayfs -f -o squash_to_uid=$(id -u),squash_to_gid=$(id -g),lowerdir=/usr/lib64/librewolf,upperdir=$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/firefoxpwa/overlayfs/upper,workdir=$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/firefoxpwa/overlayfs/work "$HOME/.local/share/firefoxpwa/runtime"
fi

[filips123]

Unfortunetely, I don't know why this happens, and I don't have time currently to test it in Gentoo VM. One more thing you can try is to remove squash_to_uid and squash_to_gid, maybe change directories, and try to simplify that command. Other than that, I don't know what else you could try...

[ThisNekoGuy]

If I remove the squash lines, attempting to run PWAs returns permission denied errors (~/.local/share/firefoxpwa/runtime/ becomes root-owned):

22:33:20 [INFO] Patching the runtime
22:33:20 [ERROR] Failed to patch the runtime

Caused by:
    Permission denied (os error 13)

"Simplifying" the command to:

fuse-overlayfs -f -o squash_to_uid=$(id -u) -o squash_to_gid=$(id -g) -o lowerdir=/usr/lib64/librewolf -o upperdir=$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/firefoxpwa/overlayfs/upper -o workdir=$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/firefoxpwa/overlayfs/ "$HOME/.local/share/firefoxpwa/runtime"

(Also changed workdir to $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/firefoxpwa/overlayfs/ because of the double work directory we saw earlier)
But this didn't change its behavior at all.

I wouldn't understand why changing the upper and work locations would do anything though, because those are both user-owned... I'm really puzzled as to how this is happening.

With squash included, running the PWA command directly via terminal returns this:

user@GENTOO ~> /usr/bin/firefoxpwa site launch 01HRDA5VEXYCSCT40EFDS469B3 --protocol                                                                                                                                
22:46:00 [INFO] Patching the runtime
22:46:00 [INFO] Runtime patched!
22:46:00 [INFO] Patching the profile
22:46:00 [INFO] Profile patched!
22:46:00 [INFO] Launching the web app

To which the browser launches again but not as intended, like before. I'm not exactly sure what about this process isn't working correctly and being able to just use my system browser is ideal. :/