Manpages - flatpak-spawn.1

flatpak-spawn - Run commands in a sandbox

flatpak-spawn [OPTION…] COMMAND [ARGUMENT…]

Unlike other flatpak commands, flatpak-spawn is available to applications inside the sandbox. It runs COMMAND outside the sandbox: either in another sandbox, or on the host.

When called without –host, flatpak-spawn uses the Flatpak portal to create a copy of the sandbox it was called from, optionally using tighter permissions and optionally the latest version of the app and runtime (see –latest-version).

The following options are understood:

-h, –help

Show help options and exit.

-v, –verbose

Print debug information

–forward-fd=FD

Forward a file descriptor

–clear-env

Run with a clean environment

–watch-bus

Make the spawned command exit if the caller disappears from the session bus

–env=VAR=VALUE

Set an environment variable

–latest-version

Use the latest version of the refs that are used to set up the sandbox

–no-network

Run without network access

–sandbox

Run fully sandboxed. See the documentation for the –sandbox option in *flatpak-run*(1)

See the –sandbox-expose and –sandbox-expose-ro options for selective file access.

–sandbox-expose=NAME

Expose read-write access to a file in the sandbox.

Note that absolute paths or subdirectories are not allowed. The files must be in the sandbox subdirectory of the instance directory (i.e. ~/.var/app/$APP_ID/sandbox).

This option is useful in combination with –sandbox (otherwise the instance directory is accessible anyway).

–sandbox-expose-ro=NAME

Expose readonly access to a file in the sandbox.

Note that absolute paths or subdirectories are not allowed. The files must be in the sandbox subdirectory of the instance directory (i.e. ~/.var/app/$APP_ID/sandbox).

This option is useful in combination with –sandbox (otherwise the instance directory is accessible anyway).

–host

Run the command unsandboxed on the host. This requires access to the org.freedesktop.Flatpak D-Bus interface.

–directory=DIR

The working directory in which to run the command.

Note that the given directory must exist in the sandbox or, when used in conjunction with –host, on the host.

$ flatpak-spawn ls /var/run

*flatpak*(1)