How It Works
proot provides chroot-like filesystem isolation by intercepting system calls at the user level — no root, no kernel modifications. The Alpine rootfs is bundled directly in the Aether app assets and is automatically extracted on first use. Once initialized, the agent can run any Alpine-compatible command inside this environment:First-Time Setup
Initialize Alpine during onboarding or from Settings → Alpine. Aether extracts the bundled runtime assets into its private app storage; it does not download the rootfs, and setup is not tied to Agent Mode.What’s Included
Aether provisions a standard Alpine Linux arm64 base system. Out of the box you get the Alpine shell (ash), core utilities (busybox), and the apk package manager. From there you can install anything in the Alpine package registry:
Using Shell Tools
When a shell command selects Alpine, it runs inside the Alpine environment. Keep this in mind when interpreting file paths:Accessing Android Storage
Aether does not bind Android shared storage into Alpine as/sdcard. Files exposed to Aether’s workspace tools are managed through /workspace.
Persisting Data
The Alpine rootfs lives in Aether’s private app storage and persists across sessions. Files you (or the agent) create in~ inside Alpine remain available the next time you open Aether. Think of it as a persistent Linux home directory tied to your Aether install.
Alpine runs on arm64-v8a only. This is the reason Aether requires an arm64 (64-bit ARM) Android device — the bundled rootfs binary is compiled for that architecture.