Qemu Snappy 15.04: How to tune sysctl.conf?

Question

I was able to start & login into Snappy Ubuntu 15.04. However, doing:

sudo vi /etc/sysctl.conf

is NOT permitted.

How am I suppose to tune my own kernel and make changes to /etc for performance and security?

Also. How to install nano editor to replace the OLD vi?

Thanks very much.

Answer 1

Not sure what you mean by "OLD" ... :)

ubuntu@localhost:~$ vi -version
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Feb 18 2016 12:05:46)

7.4 is the latest release and the specific version we use was just recently rebuilt. In case you mean the behavior (i.e. no cursor key support in edit mode) you can switch to new style behavior by creating a .vimrc file with:

set nocompatible

I doubt a nano snap would be a good idea unless you run it completely unconfined (since it would never be able to actually write files outside of its rw-snap dir), you can use the "classic dimension" [1] to actually use apt to install and use such things.

Changing /etc/sysctl.conf is definitely a missing feature, it should should actually be manageable. I filed https://bugs.launchpad.net/snappy/+bug/1552679 for this.

(Note that I'm talking about xenial here, 15.04 images will go out of support with the 16.04 release, they will not see changes or new features.)

---

[1]

sudo snappy enable-classic; snappy shell classic

Answer 2

This kind of modification is supposed to go in the gadget snap (https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/snappy/guides/gadget/). I'm asking Oliver to amend my answer here to know if this file is tunable through it.

On the other question: you can make a "nano" snap that you will install on your system. For more information on how to create snaps, here is the tour (do not hesitate to explore the developer website): https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/snappy/build-apps/. The idea is that someone will come with such a snap as well for anyone to reuse.