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Jonas Brømsø
Jonas Brømsø

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TIL: Debugging a b0rken Docker build step

Debugging a b0rken Docker build step

docker is great! - but if your build will not work it can be a pain.

This nifty little trick can be used to inspect an image where a layer is not playing nicely, it does you have access to some sort of shell in the container.

I am emulating this with the shell builtin command false, but it could any build step, where the integrity of your container is relying on build steps to succeed

# Dockerfile
FROM       alpine:latest

LABEL      maintainer="jonasbn"
RUN        echo "hello world" > /tmp/hello_world
ENTRYPOINT ["cat", "/tmp/hello_world"]
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Build it

$ docker build -t smelly_container .
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So in order to get past the bad step you append: ; exit 0 to the difficult RUN step and will build not matter the return value of the previous shell command

# Dockerfile
FROM       alpine:latest

LABEL      maintainer="jonasbn"
RUN        echo "hello world" > /tmp/hello_world ; false; exit 0
ENTRYPOINT ["cat", "/tmp/hello_world"]
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Now you can inspect the container

$ docker run -it --entrypoint /bin/sh smelly_container
/ # cat /tmp/hello_world 
hello world
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And you can of course run it, your mileage might vary depending on the severity of the b0rkedness of your difficult build step, which we chose to ignore

$ docker run -it  smelly_container
hello world
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Source: StackOverflow

Originally posted in my TIL collection

Top comments (2)

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russellbateman profile image
Russell Bateman

Thanks for this short article. This is a little like murdering someone, then cutting him open to see if all his organs are in the right place. I wish there were a better, more sophisticated way.

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jonasbn profile image
Jonas Brømsø

I understand your point and I agree, but sometimes "Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures".