Raymond P. Burkholder - Things I Do - Debian

Installing Citrix Workspace on Debian

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Sun, 10 May 2026 00:36:22 +0000

On installation, the Citrix Workspace installer will ask for libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37. However, in the latest Debian, libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0 is installed. That package brings in many other packages so there is no practical way to install an earlier version.

The solution to this give the older Debian Bookworm a try where the package is available for installation.

> apt-cache search libwebkit2gtk
libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 - Web content engine library for GTK
libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev - Web content engine library for GTK - development files
libwebkit2gtk-4.0-doc - Web content engine library for GTK - documentation
libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0 - Web content engine library for GTK
libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev - Web content engine library for GTK - development files

To prep for Citrix installation, install the following:

# apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 libcurl4 libspeexdsp1

LXC Fresh Container Construction From Scratch for Proxmox

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:03:19 +0000

There are many articles available which discuss customizing a pre-existing Proxmox Container Template. Few, if any, discuss constructing an LXC container from scratch. Maybe because, fundamentally, a container template is just the rootfs as tarball, so building it is quite easy:

Build a linux based virtual machine, I use Debian's recent release
Install LXC and its template package
Construct and initialize an LXC container
Shut it down and and zip it up
Copy it over to the ProxMox template directory

The details:

# build the linux vm - details not relevant here
# ssh into the vm, or start a command line
# install basic packages

sudo apt install --no-install-recommends lxc lxc-templates xz-utils bridge-utils wget debootstrap rsync

# basic container templates are in:
#   /usr/share/lxc/templates/ 
# for debian as well as other distributions

# create an lxc container, provide a list any additional packages

lxc-create --template debian --name trixie-template -- --release trixie --packages iputils-ping,vim-tiny

# start and attach to the container
lxc-start trixie-template
lxc-attach trixie-template

# prepare for generating template
apt clean
apt purge

# Remove SSH host keys to ensure unique keys for each clone:
rm /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*

# Empty the machine ID file:
truncate -s 0 /etc/machine-id

# clear history
unset HISTFILE
# truncate history
history -c
> ~/.bash_history
# the following has a space in front to prevent inclusion in the history
 shutdown -h now

# the shutdown returns to the virtual machine's prompt
# compress the directory structure

cd /var/lib/lxc/trixie-template/

# remove /dev files as they can't be created in an unprivileged container
# an example error message if not removed:
#   tar: ./rootfs/dev/urandom: Cannot mknod: Operation not permitted
# construction of a new container will re-create the directory and files

rm ./rootfs/dev/ptmx
rm ./rootfs/dev/zero
rm ./rootfs/dev/tty3
rm ./rootfs/dev/urandom
rm ./rootfs/dev/null
rm ./rootfs/dev/tty
rm ./rootfs/dev/console
rm ./rootfs/dev/tty4
rm ./rootfs/dev/tty2
rm ./rootfs/dev/random
rm ./rootfs/dev/tty1
rm ./rootfs/dev/full

# cd into rootfs and zip the container

cd rootfs
tar --xz --acls --numeric-owner -cf /var/local/trixie-13-3-template.tar.xz ./

# the xz file can be copied over to proxmox and placed into
# /var/lib/pve/local-btrfs/template/cache/
# for use as a template for container creation

During the first use of lxc-create to create the original container, packages are downloaded and installed to build the container. The packages and installation is cached for faster subsequent builds of the same container type.

If the cache becomes stale, it can be rebuilt by using --flush-cache in a manner similar to:

lxc-create --template debian --name trixie-template -- --release trixie --flush-cache --packages iputils-ping,vim-tiny,less,python-minimal

An existing cache can be updated with something like:

sudo chroot /var/cache/lxc/debian/rootfs-trixie-amd64
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get clean
exit

courtesy of Updating lxc image/container caches

One other note, there are two package candidates for installing the ping utility:

iputils-ping - native Linux ping, preferred for Debian/Linux
inetutils-ping - general gnu version, used on a variety of posix sytstems, less preferred

Some fix-ups in the process:

apt-get install less
dpkg-reconfigure locales
useradd user

lxc-create of debian testing on debian trixie

nospam@example.com (Raymond P. Burkholder) — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 03:10:34 +0000

When creating a Debian testing/forky LXC container on a Debian trixie machine, the following error may be encountered in the output:

I: Resolving dependencies of required packages...
I: Resolving dependencies of base packages...
I: Checking component main on http://deb.debian.org/debian...
E: Couldn't find these debs: isc-dhcp-client
Failed to download the rootfs, aborting.
Failed to download 'debian base'
failed to install debian

This is a result of bug #1125011 in the Debian bug tracker.

There are several possible solutions:

Manually apply the patches supplied by the Debian LXC team
Probably might be solved by running lxc-create on a testing/forky machine, where the solution may have already been applied - I have not confirmed this
Or it may work on a sid machine