Setting up a chroot for Raspbian

I want to be able to build packages for Raspbian but on a regular machine.  Luckily, there is the very handy qemu-debootstrap which will let you setup a normal debootstrap chroot that runs via qemu.  Here’s how I did it (this is on Squeeze, for newer releases, you won’t need the backports.  You need qemu-user-static v1.1.2 or newer):

sudo apt-get -t squeeze-backports install qemu-user-static
sudo apt-get install dchroot schroot debootstrap wget
wget https://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/r/raspbian-archive-keyring/raspbian-archive-keyring_20120528.2_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i raspbian-archive-keyring_20120528.2_all.deb
sudo mkdir /var/chroot/raspbian-armhf/
sudo qemu-debootstrap --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/raspbian-archive-keyring.gpg \
 --arch armhf wheezy /var/chroot/raspbian-armhf http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian
echo raspbian-armhf | sudo tee /var/chroot/raspbian-armhf/etc/debian_chroot
sudo ln -s ../proc/mounts /var/chroot/raspbian-armhf/etc/mtab
sudo cp /etc/passwd /etc/group /etc/shadow /var/chroot/raspbian-armhf/etc

Then I edited my /etc/fstab to add the mount points:

#
# raspbian-armhf chroot
#
/home           /var/chroot/raspbian-armhf/home        none    bind            0       0
/tmp            /var/chroot/raspbian-armhf/tmp         none    bind            0       0
/dev            /var/chroot/raspbian-armhf/dev         none    bind            0       0
proc-chroot     /var/chroot/raspbian-armhf/proc        proc    defaults        0       0
devpts-chroot   /var/chroot/raspbian-armhf/dev/pts     devpts  defaults        0       0

I edited /etc/dchroot.conf to add the new chroot:

raspbian-armhf /var/chroot/raspbian-armhf

And then /etc/schroot/schroot.conf to add the new chroot there:

[raspbian-armhf]
description=raspbian wheezy armhf
location=/var/chroot/raspbian-armhf
users=pd
groups=sbuild-security
root-groups=root
personality=linux32

Now I’m ready for the last steps, then I can use my chroot:

sudo mount -a
dchroot -d -c raspbian-armhf

If it was successful, you should see your prompt change to:

(raspbian-armhf)pd@pdlab3:~$