debootstrap

Download an Ubuntu image and save it to a directory:

sudo debootstrap --verbose trusty /tmp/debootstrap http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu

This downloads a small 200Mb Debian system.

Note that sys, proc and devpts are not mounted: their directories are only created.

Things you can do with it:

• chroot into it TODO test:

  mkdir /tmp/debootstrap
  sudo mount -t devpts none /tmp/debootstrap/dev/pts
  sudo mount -t proc none /tmp/debootstrap/proc
  sudo chroot /tmp/debootstrap /bin/bash
  

  Depending on what you want to do, you don't need to mount devpts and proc: it all comes down to if your utilities will use them or not.

  For example, I was able to install and run GCC without them.

  But you can't of course run px aux as it reads information from /proc.