Distrobox Arch with init does not allow to enter

[awkorama]

Describe the bug

Creating a new archlinux distrobox container with its own init and then tryin to enter results in error.

What did you expect to happen?

I would expect to enter bash in the newly created container, instead I get error

Output of bootc status

● Booted image: ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable
        Digest: sha256:e64e121ccfaf3fc62387fa0b67b06ac0597ceb3977c9610ab8975f475187cdaf (amd64)
       Version: 43.20260408.1 (2026-04-08T21:30:52Z)

  Rollback image: ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable
          Digest: sha256:e4ba89384852518e7a646209de5cc9107b3df0eb753cc1d623e124e343fe10f4 (amd64)
         Version: 43.20260331 (2026-03-31T01:44:52Z)

Output of groups

awk wheel

Extra information or context

❯ which distrobox
/usr/bin/distrobox

~
❯ distrobox create --init --image archlinux --name test
Creating 'test' using image archlinux [ OK ]
Distrobox 'test' successfully created.
To enter, run:

distrobox enter test

~
❯ distrobox enter test
Starting container... [ OK ]
Installing basic packages... [ OK ]
Setting up devpts mounts... [ OK ]
Setting up read-only mounts... [ OK ]
Setting up read-write mounts... [ OK ]
Setting up host's sockets integration... [ OK ]
Integrating host's themes, icons, fonts... [ OK ]
Setting up distrobox profile... [ OK ]
Setting up sudo... [ OK ]
Setting up user's group list... [ OK ]
Setting up existing user - shell... [ OK ]
Setting up existing user - groups... [ OK ]
Ensuring user's access... [ OK ]
Setting up init system... [ OK ]
Firing up init system... [ OK ]

Container Setup Complete!
bash: --: invalid option
Usage: bash [GNU long option] [option] ...
bash [GNU long option] [option] script-file ...
GNU long options:
--debug
--debugger
--dump-po-strings
--dump-strings
--help
--init-file
--login
--noediting
--noprofile
--norc
--posix
--pretty-print
--rcfile
--restricted
--verbose
--version
Shell options:
-ilrsD or -c command or -O shopt_option (invocation only)
-abefhkmnptuvxBCEHPT or -o option

[renner0e]

can you try this on a new user account? If that works over there then you did some things to your users bashrc or similiar that would break this, I can't reproduce this.

[awkorama]

Tried with a brand new user as well. Note that this only happens when I do --init when creating the container

[awkorama]

After some investigation, this seems to be a (very) upstream issue in util-linux as described here