Snapd
snapd is a REST API daemon for managing snap packages ("snaps"). Users can interact with it by using the snap client, which is part of the same package.
Contents
Installation
Install snapd from the official repositories.
Installing it will install the snapd
daemon as well as snap-confine, which mounts and launches snap packages.
Configuration
The package ships several systemd unit files, which manage several tasks like automatically refreshing all installed snaps once a new version is released.
To launch the snapd
daemon when snap tries to use it, start the snapd.socket
and/or enable it to have it started at boot.
To start the timer which periodically refreshes snaps when a new version is pushed to the store use:
# systemctl start snapd.refresh.timer
Removal
Uninstalling the snapd package will not remove directories and files created while using snap. It's best to remove your snaps with snap remove before uninstalling the snapd package. At this time it is not possible to remove the ubuntu-core snap through the snap command. To remove the state, snap package cache and mount unit files completely, you can follow the instructions below.
1. We unmount any currently active snap that is mounted to /var/lib/snapd/snap/
.
# umount $(mount | grep snap | awk '{print $3}')
2. We remove the state directory and mount hook.
# rm -rf /var/lib/snapd # rm -rf /var/snap
3. We remove any unit files, that try to mount snaps from /var/lib/snapd/snaps
to /var/lib/snapd/snap
at boot.
# find /etc/systemd/system -name "snap-*.mount" -delete # find /etc/systemd/system -name "snap.*.service" -delete # find /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants -name "snap-*.mount" -delete # find /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants -name "snap.*.service" -delete
Managing snaps
The snap tool is used to manage the snaps.
Finding
To find snaps to install, you can query the Ubuntu Store with:
$ snap find searchterm
Installing
Once you found the snap you are looking for you can install it with:
# snap install snapname
This requires root privileges. Per user installation of snaps is not possible, yet. This will download the snap into /var/lib/snapd/snaps
and mount it to /snap/snapname
to make it available to the system.
It will also create mount units for each snap and add them to /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/
as symlinks to make all snaps available when the system is booted.
Once that is done you should find it in the list of installed snaps together with its version number, revision and developer using:
$ snap list
You can also sideload snaps from your local hard drive with:
# snap install --devmode /path/to/snap
Updating
To update your snaps use:
# snap refresh
Removing
Snaps can be removed by executing:
# snap remove snapname
Support
Arch Linux related mailing lists and other official Arch Linux support channels aren't an appropriate place to request help with snaps on Arch Linux. An appropriate place to ask for support is the Snapcraft mailing list.
See also
- arstechnica article (06/16) about Ubuntu snaps becoming available for Arch and other distros