© 2026 Hedgehog Software, LLC

TwitterGitHubDiscord
More
CommunitiesDocsAboutTermsPrivacy
Search
Star
Setup for Free
BazziteB
Bazzite•15mo ago•
16 replies
190n

crun permission error starting distrobox container

I can create a distrobox container with
distrobox create -n arch -i archlinux:base-devel
distrobox create -n arch -i archlinux:base-devel
, but I can't start it: when I run
distrobox enter arch
distrobox enter arch
, the following error is printed:

Error: unable to start container "7180389eef271ab8853481381b363f31cdf839e41ecf787a5586a427f7bea568": crun: open `/var/home/ben/.local/share/containers/storage/overlay/685d29c60873b9b6fb66c58667f333378a385f74b5fb3d61c2944ae747bf8c32/merged`: Permission denied: OCI permission denied
Error: unable to start container "7180389eef271ab8853481381b363f31cdf839e41ecf787a5586a427f7bea568": crun: open `/var/home/ben/.local/share/containers/storage/overlay/685d29c60873b9b6fb66c58667f333378a385f74b5fb3d61c2944ae747bf8c32/merged`: Permission denied: OCI permission denied


The permissions on that directory's parent are:

$ ls -ld .local/share/containers/storage/overlay/685d29c60873b9b6fb66c58667f333378a385f74b5fb3d61c2944ae747bf8c32/
drwx------. 1 524288 524288 46 Dec  7 13:33 .local/share/containers/storage/overlay/685d29c60873b9b6fb66c58667f333378a385f74b5fb3d61c2944ae747bf8c32/
$ ls -ld .local/share/containers/storage/overlay/685d29c60873b9b6fb66c58667f333378a385f74b5fb3d61c2944ae747bf8c32/
drwx------. 1 524288 524288 46 Dec  7 13:33 .local/share/containers/storage/overlay/685d29c60873b9b6fb66c58667f333378a385f74b5fb3d61c2944ae747bf8c32/


I get the same error using any other image, too (tested Fedora and Ubuntu).

However, if I make a container directly using Podman, it works fine, using either
podman run --rm -it archlinux:base-devel
podman run --rm -it archlinux:base-devel
, or
podman create --name arch2 -i archlinux:base-devel
podman create --name arch2 -i archlinux:base-devel
then
podman exec -it arch2 sh
podman exec -it arch2 sh
.

I've tried running
podman system reset
podman system reset
a couple times, as well as completely deleting the
.local/share/containers
.local/share/containers
directory (I didn't have any other containers prior to creating the distrobox), but this error still occurs with any new distrobox I create. How can I debug this issue? I've found a couple other posts on this Discord reporting similar errors, but there weren't clear resolutions for any of them.
BazziteJoin
The operating system for the next generation of gamers.
29,482Members
Resources

Similar Threads

Was this page helpful?
Recent Announcements

Similar Threads

Distrobox stuck at starting container
BazziteBBazzite / 🛟bazzite-help
13mo ago
Distrobox Permission Denied
BazziteBBazzite / 🛟bazzite-help
12mo ago
Distrobox container upgrade
BazziteBBazzite / 🛟bazzite-help
4mo ago
Error when updating distrobox / davinci resolve container
BazziteBBazzite / 🛟bazzite-help
2y ago