NutShell

Create a judge environment in a nutshell!

Nutshell is a part of Project Polya. This project means to provide a CLI helper for teachers/students to set up their own sandboxed environment, so that they can work together smoothly in later grading.

How to use?

Why not check the help page first?

nutshell 0.1.0

USAGE:
    nutshell <SUBCOMMAND>

FLAGS:
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -V, --version    Prints version information

SUBCOMMANDS:
    create-root      create an arch chroot environment
    help             Prints this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)
    init-overlay     initialize an overlay file system
    make-squashfs    create a squashfs

create-root

nutshell-create-root 0.1.0
create an arch chroot environment

USAGE:
    nutshell create-root [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] --target-dir <target-dir>

FLAGS:
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -s, --shell      enter the chroot environment after basic setups
    -V, --version    Prints version information

OPTIONS:
    -d, --download-backend <download-backend>    downloader [default: aria2c]  [possible values: aria2c, wget, pacstrap]
    -m, --mirror <mirror>                        image download mirror [default: https://mirrors.kernel.org/archlinux/]
    -l, --mirror-list <mirror-list>              pacman mirror list
    -p, --pacman-config <pacman-config>          pacman config file
    -t, --target-dir <target-dir>                target directory to create the root              

This command helps you to create an Arch Linux chroot environment. You can set your own download backend: aria2c, wget, pacstrap are all available.

This command will download the bootstrap tar of Arch and then extract it into the target directory. Using systemd-nspawn, it will populate GPG keys and run some basic updates. It will also prepare the base and base-devel environment.

For Users from Mainland China

You are highly recommeneded to set a download mirror at mainland, such as https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/archlinux/. As for the mirrorlist, you may want some configurations like the following:

# mirrorlist
Server = https://ftp.sjtu.edu.cn/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = https://mirrors.ustc.edu.cn/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

init-overlay

nutshell-init-overlay 0.1.0
initialize an overlay file system

USAGE:
    nutshell init-overlay [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] --base-dir <base-dir> --data-dir <data-dir> --mount-dir <mount-dir>

FLAGS:
    -h, --help            Prints help information
    -p, --print-result    print the result in json format
    -s, --shell           enter the chroot environment after mount
    -V, --version         Prints version information

OPTIONS:
    -b, --base-dir <base-dir>      the path to the lowerdir
    -d, --data-dir <data-dir>      the path store workdir and upperdir
    -m, --mount-dir <mount-dir>    the path to mount the merged root
    -t, --tmp-size <tmp-size>      create and bind a tmpfs with the given size

This command helps to mount a squashfs file with an overlay layer. data-dir and base-dir are the temporary storage path needed for overlay layer.

make-squashfs

nutshell-make-squashfs 0.1.0
create a squashfs

USAGE:
    nutshell make-squashfs [FLAGS] --source <source> --target <target>

FLAGS:
    -f, --faster     make the process faster by disabling high quality compression
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -V, --version    Prints version information

OPTIONS:
    -s, --source <source>    source directory
    -t, --target <target>    target path

This command is just a wrapper of mksquashfs. It will help to create a squashfs file that can be used in the Project Polya.

By default, it uses -comp lz4 -Xhc as the compression args.

BTW, we use Arch Linux

We find that Arch Linux enjoy lots of up to date packages and a very lighweight design principle, which make it a very ideal Linux distro for Project Polya.