Docker Base Images from Brandon Mitchell

These base images include:

• /etc/entrypoint.d for all entrypoint scripts
• wait-for-it.sh from https://github.com/vishnubob/wait-for-it
• fix-perms to match uid/gid of user inside container to a mounted volume
• gosu to run commands as a non-root user after setup in the entrypoint
• Secrets imported into environment variables
• save-volume and load-volume to cache and initialize volume data from the image in scenarios where docker would not normally do this
• stop-on-trigger which can stop the container on a condition

Platform specific additions

Debian base image includes:

• apt-install: runs apt update and install with non-interactive options and performs a cleanup

Alpine base image includes:

• apk-install: runs an apk add with options to avoid caching
• The "shadow" package is required for useradd, usermod, and groupmod

Using /etc/entrypoint.d/

• Files named *.env will be sourced if readable and may contain environment variables
• Files named *.sh will be executed if executable
• Files will be processed in order

Using /etc/healthcheck.d/

• This mirrors entrypoint.d functionality, first sourcing any *.env files, and then running all *.sh scripts. If any script fails, the healtcheck will fail.

Environment variables

• ORIG_ENTRYPOINT: If set to a non-empty value, this is prepended to the command being run
• USE_INIT: If set to any non-empty value, tini will be used to run the command, providing repaing of zombie processes
• RUN_AS: If set to any non-empty value, gosu will be used to drop privledges from root to the requested user (see potential issues writing to /dev/stdout below)

Converting Secrets to Environment Variables

Environment variables with the value {DOCKER_SECRET:xyz} will be replaced with the contents of /run/secrets/xyz. This also works for a substring, e.g. USERPASS=root@{DOCKER_SECRET:root_login} would lookup root_login and replace it with something like USERPASS=root@passw0rd.

Note that environment variables are inherently less secure than the secret file since they may be read by other processes with access to /proc, and often get written to debugging logs. Be sure to understand the risks of using these variables before adding them to your application architecture.

Using scratch

The scratch image is designed to for extending other images, e.g.:

FROM your_base_image
COPY --from=sudobmitch/base:scratch / /

If you extend an alpine image, the shadow package needs to be installed for the fix-perms script. If you use volume caching with the -d option, rsync needs to be installed.

Volume Caching

Volume caching scripts are useful for the following scenarios:

• When docker does not initialize host volumes for you.
• When using a tmpfs volume and need the content to be initialized.
• When using a pre-initialized volume that needs to be updated on every startup with data from the image.

Caching is a two step process:

1. Calling RUN save-volume /path/to/dir in your Dockerfile for any directory to cache in the image. This directory will be moved into cache storage, so make it the last step on this directory that you run during your build.
2. Calling load-volume /path/to/dir, or use the entrypointd.sh which loads all volumes you have previously saved with the flags passed to save-volume.

The save-volume and load-volume scripts have the following options:

• -d: delete files from the mounted volume, this uses/depends on rsync.
• -u: update a volume even if it already exists. This overwrites any changes in the volume, but does not delete or modify files that were not previously cached.

The load-volume script will:

• Create a symlink if there is no volume mount to update.
• If the -d flag was used, run rsync to reset the volume to the cached state.
• If the volume mount is empty or -u was used, run a cp -a to initialize the volume.

Note: caching a volume with the above steps results in the directory being moved which will double the size of the directory in the docker layers when performed as a separate build step. When possible, merge the save-volume step with any other commands used to create the volume folder. If copying files between stages in a multi-stage build, include /.volume-cache.

Stop On Trigger

The stop-on-trigger script can be used to stop a container on a condition. This would be launched as a background process in an entrypoint script. When the condition is met, all processes are sent a SIGTERM, followed by a delay, and then a SIGKILL. However, pid 1 will not receive this signal inside of the container so you need to use tini to run your app as a child pid. This is done by setting ENV USE_INIT=1 in the image when using entrypointd.sh. A sample entrypointd script would look like:

#!/bin/sh
stop-on-trigger -m /etc/certs/host.pem &

Which would stop the container when the file is modified, and any container restart policy would result in a new container running, using that new certificate file.

Certificates

Additional certificate authorities (CA) can be configured by adding the certificate file to /etc/certs.d/ as either a *.pem or *.crt file. This requires the "ca-certificates" package to be installed in the image, or at least the /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt file to be installed. The image must also be started by the root user.

Examples

The nginx example shows:

• Extending the nginx image with the scratch base image
• Running the application as uid 5000 inside the container
• Volume caching to automatically populate host and tmpfs volumes
• Entrypoint to automatically fix the uid to match the developer volume mount
• Using curl for a healthcheck

Errors Writing to /dev/stdout

There are scenarios where writing to /dev/stdout and /dev/stderr may fail with permission problems when the container starts as root and changes to another user. Should you encounter this, try to add the user to the tty group and configure the container with a tty. See the following issue for more details: moby/moby#31243 (comment)