Failing to run dnf toolbox on Silverblue 37

Fedora Silverblue 36 was installed from installation media. The dnf container through toolbox had never been run, until just now, after upgrading the system image to Fedora 37.

Presently, the command fails, as seen in the following console capture:

$ toolbox run dnf
Error: container fedora-toolbox-37 not found
Use the 'create' command to create a toolbox.
Run 'toolbox --help' for usage.

The VERSION field is given as “37.20221117.0 (Silverblue)” in the file /etc/os-release.

I think you should create a toolbox container first. Then, you run the container and you can use dnf as the one in Workstation.

This link may help you about Toolbox command line: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/toolbox/#toolbox-create

Am I mistaken to expect a container called dnf be provided as a feature of the base system?

The documentation has indicated that the given command is the preferred way to invoke dnf subcommands such as search. Is the ability to run it as such available from any empty container, or is particular provisioning required?

Yep you’d have misunderstood it. dnf can only be run inside the container. Additionally, you may use other distros inside the container (it should be “stated” when creating a container).

The official documentation link I shared above will be very helpful to you. Good luck :slight_smile:

I have not found much of use in the toolbox documentation, but from the Silverblue FAQ I take the following excerpt (emphasis added):

How can I check if an rpm software package is available in the repository?

At this point in time, there is no rpm package search function built into rpm-ostree. However, you can use toolbox with the following command:

$ toolbox run dnf search <package>

The assumption is that you have already created a toolbox matching the version of your Fedora Silverblue installation.

What remains to me without explanation is why this command attempts to resolve a container by the name fedora-toolbox-37.

Okay let me try to show the step.
I want to install <package> in a container and I am going to use toolbox for the first time.

Step 1, (note: you may replace container1 with any other names you would like

$ toolbox create container1

The terminal will show this:

Image required to create toolbox container.
Download registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora-toolbox:37 (500MB)? [y/N]:

hit y.
While finished it will show

Created container: container1
Enter with: toolbox enter container1

Step 2, run the container

$ toolbox enter container1

There will be a hexagon on the left of the next line, which shows that you’re in a container.

Last step, install your package that you need.

$ sudo dnf install <package>

Done.

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Moving this topic to #english . #common-issues is used for already established bugs which affect a large portion of our user base.