Steam on LXC, on Saucy
Steam is an awesome game and content distribution platform, but unfortunately only runs on 32bit systems.
If like me you like to keep your main install as pure 64bits as possible, it is possible to run Steam inside an LXC container!
The original article and source code by Stephane Graber works wonders in Raring, but an API change makes it fail on Saucy. I recently repackaged the software for Saucy, so it is now trivial to have a working Steam LXC container again!
Installation
Quite simply add the tribaal/steam-lxc PPA to your system:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:tribaal/steam-lxc sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install steam-lxc lxc
Creating a steam LXC container
Again, creating a steam LXC container is quite easy:
sudo steam-lxc create
This might take a while, since it will download a base 12.04 image, update it, install all the required libraries and finally install Steam.
Running the container
Once the container is built, you can start it with the command:
sudo steam-lxc run
Of course, all the normal LXC commands work with the steam container, so you can for example make sure it's running or get its IP address with the usual listing command:
sudo lxc-ls --fancy
Destroying the container
When (if) you get tired of Steam and want to reclaim the used space on your system, you can quite simply delete the container you created using the following:
sudo steam-lxc destroy
Running Steam in a container is a great idea, and hopefully the simple fix for it to run seamlessly on Saucy will make it to the main repository to avoid doing the PPA dance :)
Have fun!