This tutorial is for creating a minimal Linux chroot inside a Linux distro that has SystemD fully implemented. This tutorial will not work on Debian Jessie.
First we need to install some dependencies:
sudo apt-get install debootstrap systemd-container
Depending on you distro, you may use another package manager to install instead. Now that we have debootstrap, we can have a basic Linux distro installation. In the example below we create a minimal Debian Jessie installation on /var/chroot directory
sudo mkdir -p /var/chroot sudo debootstrap --arch amd64 jessie /var/chroot http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/
After this, the chroot is installed and fully functional.
In order to access the chroot for the first time, use:
sudo systemd-nspawn -D /var/chroot
This will let you to use the chroot as root user. It is a bad idea to use root, so first setup a root password, and then create a user. Once this is done, your chroot is ready for everyday usage.
To boot a chroot inside a container use:
sudo systemd-nspawn -D /var/chroot -b
This will give you a login screen, so log in as your user.
To log more terminals to this container, use:
sudo machinectl login chroot