Installing snap on Arch Linux

On Arch Linux, snap can be installed from the Arch User Repository (AUR).

The manual build process is the Arch-supported install method for AUR packages, and you’ll need the prerequisites installed before you can install any AUR package. You can then install snap with the following:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/snapd.git
cd snapd
makepkg -si

Once installed, the systemd unit that manages the main snap communication socket needs to be enabled:

sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket

Confinement

To take advantage of Snap confinement and application sandboxing, ensure AppArmor is install and enabled on your system, then run the following:

sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.apparmor.service

To test whether confinement is running correctly, install the hello-world snap and run hello-world.evil. If confinement is working, you will see a permission denied error:

$ hello-world.evil 
Hello Evil World!
This example demonstrates the app confinement
You should see a permission denied error next
/snap/hello-world/29/bin/evil: 9: /snap/hello-world/29/bin/evil: cannot create /var/tmp/myevil.txt: Permission denied

Classic support

To enable classic snap support, enter the following to create a symbolic link between /var/lib/snapd/snap and /snap:

sudo ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap

Either log out and back in again, or restart your system, to ensure snap’s paths are updated correctly.

To test your system, install the hello-world snap and make sure it runs correctly:

$ sudo snap install hello-world
hello-world 6.3 from Canonical✓ installed
$ hello-world
Hello World!

Snap is now installed and ready to go! If you’re using a desktop, a great next step is to install the Snap Store app.


Last updated 14 days ago.