Creating Your Own Container Images

Overview

Teaching: 20 min
Exercises: 15 min

Questions

• How can I make my own Docker images?

• How do I document the ‘recipe’ for a Docker image?

Objectives

• Explain the purpose of a Dockerfile and show some simple examples.

• Demonstrate how to build a Docker image from a Dockerfile.

• Compare the steps of creating a container interactively versus a Dockerfile.

• Create an installation strategy for a container.

• Demonstrate how to upload (‘push’) your container images to the Docker Hub.

• Describe the significance of the Docker Hub naming scheme.

There are lots of reasons why you might want to create your own Docker image.

• You can’t find a container with all the tools you need on Docker Hub.
• You want to have a container to “archive” all the specific software versions you ran for a project.
• You want to share your workflow with someone else.

Interactive installation

Before creating a reproducible installation, let’s experiment with installing software inside a container. Start the alpine container from before, interactively:

$ docker run -it alpine sh

Because this is a basic container, there’s a lot of things not installed – for example, python3.

/# python3

sh: python3: not found

Inside the container, we can run commands to install Python3. The Alpine version of Linux has a installation tool called apk that we can use to install Python3.

/# apk add --update python3 py3-pip python3-dev

We can test our installation by running a Python command:

/# python3 --version

Once Python is installed, we can add Python packages using the pip package installer:

/# pip3 install cython

Exercise: Searching for Help

Can you find instructions for installing R on Alpine Linux? Do they work?

Solution

A quick search should hopefully show that the way to install R on Alpine Linux is:

/# apk add R

Once we exit, these changes are not saved to a new container by default. There is a command that will “snapshot” our changes, but building containers this way is not easily reproducible. Instead, we’re going to take what we’ve learned from this interactive installation and create our container from a reproducible recipe, known as a Dockerfile.

If you haven’t already, exit out of the interactively running container.

/# exit

Put installation instructions in a Dockerfile

A Dockerfile is a plain text file with keywords and commands that can be used to create a new container image.

From your shell, go to the folder you downloaded at the start of the lesson and print out the Dockerfile inside:

$ cd ~/Desktop/docker-intro/basic
$ cat Dockerfile

FROM <EXISTING IMAGE>
RUN <INSTALL CMDS FROM SHELL>
RUN <INSTALL CMDS FROM SHELL>
CMD <CMD TO RUN BY DEFAULT>

Let’s break this file down:

• The first line, FROM, indicates which container we’re starting with. It is the “base” image we are going to start from.
• The next two lines RUN, will indicate installation commands we want to run. These are the same commands that we used interactively above.
• The last line, CMD, indicates the default command we want the container to run, if no other command is provided. It is recommended to provide CMD in exec-form (see the CMD section of the Dockerfile documentation for more details). It is written as a list which contains the executable to run as its first element, optionally followed by any arguments as subsequent elements. The list is enclosed in square brackets ([]) and its elements are double-quoted (") strings which are separated by commas. For example, CMD ["ls", "-lF", "--color", "/etc"] would translate to ls -lF --color /etc.

shell-form and exec-form for CMD

Another way to specify the parameter for the CMD instruction is the shell-form. Here you type the command as you would call it from the command line. Docker then silently runs this command in the image’s standard shell. CMD cat /etc/passwd is equivalent to CMD ["/bin/sh", "-c", "cat /etc/passwd"]. We recommend to prefer the more explicit exec-form because we will be able to create more flexible container command options and make sure complex commands are unambiguous in this format.

Exercise: Take a Guess

Do you have any ideas about what we should use to fill in the sample Dockerfile to replicate the installation we did above?

Solution:

Based on our experience above, edit the Dockerfile (in your text editor of choice) to look like this:

FROM alpine
RUN apk add --update python3 py3-pip python3-dev
RUN pip3 install cython
CMD ["python3", "--version"]

The recipe provided by the Dockerfile shown in the solution to the preceding exercise will use Alpine Linux as the base container, add Python and the Cython library, and set a default command to request Python to report its version information.

Create a new Docker image

So far, we just have a text file named Dockerfile – we do not yet have a container image. We want Docker to take this Dockerfile, run the installation commands contained within it, and then save the resulting container as a new container image. To do this we will use the docker build command.

We have to provide docker build with two pieces of information:

• the location of the Dockerfile
• the name of the new image. Remember the naming scheme from before? You should name your new image with your Docker Hub username and a name for the container, like this: USERNAME/CONTAINERNAME.

All together, the build command that you should run on your computer, will have a similar structure to this:

$ docker build -t USERNAME/CONTAINERNAME .

The -t option names the container; the final dot indicates that the Dockerfile is in our current directory.

For example, if my user name was alice and I wanted to call my image alpine-python, I would use this command:

$ docker build -t alice/alpine-python .

Exercise: Review!

1. Think back to earlier. What command can you run to check if your image was created successfully? (Hint: what command shows the images on your computer?)

2. We didn’t specify a tag for our image name. What tag did Docker automatically use?

3. What command will run the container you’ve created? What should happen by default if you run the container? Can you make it do something different, like print “hello world”?

Solution

1. To see your new image, run docker image ls. You should see the name of your new image under the “REPOSITORY” heading.

2. In the output of docker image ls, you can see that Docker has automatically used the latest tag for our new image.

3. We want to use docker run to run the container.

The following command should run the container and print out our default message, the version of Python:

$ docker run alice/alpine-python

To run the container and print out “Hello world” instead:

$ docker run alice/alpine-python echo "Hello World"

While it may not look like you have achieved much, you have already effected the combination of a lightweight Linux operating system with your specification to run a given command that can operate reliably on macOS, Microsoft Windows, Linux and on the cloud!

Boring but important notes about installation

There are a lot of choices when it comes to installing software – sometimes too many! Here are some things to consider when creating your own container:

• Start smart, or, don’t install everything from scratch! If you’re using Python as your main tool, start with a Python container. Same with R. We’ve used Alpine Linux as an example in this lesson, but it’s generally not a good container to start with for initial development and experimentation because it is a less common distribution of Linux; using Ubuntu, Debian and CentOS are all good options for scientific software installations. The program you’re using might recommend a particular distribution of Linux, and if so, it may be useful to start with a container image for that distribution.
• How big? How much software do you really need to install? When you have a choice, lean towards using smaller starting images and installing only what’s needed for your software, as a bigger image means longer download times to use.
• Know (or Google) your Linux. Different distributions of Linux often have distinct sets of tools for installing software. The apk command we used above is the software package installer for Alpine Linux. The installers for various common Linux distributions are listed below:
  • Ubuntu: apt or apt-get
  • Debian: deb
  • CentOS: yum Most common software installations are available to be installed via these tools. A web search for “install X on Y Linux” is usually a good start for common software installation tasks; if something isn’t available via the Linux distribution’s installation tools, try the options below.
• Use what you know. You’ve probably used commands like pip or install.packages() before on your own computer – these will also work to install things in containers (if the basic scripting language is installed).
• README. Many scientific software tools have a README or installation instructions that lay out how to install software. You want to look for instructions for Linux. If the install instructions include options like those suggested above, try those first.

In general, a good strategy for installing software is:

• Make a list of what you want to install.
• Look for pre-existing containers.
• Read through instructions for software you’ll need to install.
• Try installing everything interactively in your base container – take notes!
• From your interactive installation, create a Dockerfile and then try to build the container again from that.

Share your new container on Docker Hub

Images that you release publicly can be stored on the Docker Hub for free. If you name your image as described above, with your Docker Hub username, all you need to do is run the opposite of docker pull – docker push.

$ docker push alice/alpine-python

Make sure to substitute the full name of your container!

In a web browser, open https://hub.docker.com, and on your user page you should now see your container listed, for anyone to use or build on.

Logging In

Technically, you have to be logged into Docker on your computer for this to work. Usually it happens by default, but if docker push doesn’t work for you, run docker login first, enter your Docker Hub username and password, and then try docker push again.

What’s in a name? (again)

You don’t have to name your containers using the USERNAME/CONTAINER:TAG naming scheme. On your own computer, you can call containers whatever you want, and refer to them by the names you choose. It’s only when you want to share a container that it needs the correct naming format.

You can rename images using the docker tag command. For example, imagine someone named Alice has been working on a workflow container and called it workflow-test on her own computer. She now wants to share it in her alice Docker Hub account with the name workflow-complete and a tag of v1. Her docker tag command would look like this:

$ docker tag workflow-test alice/workflow-complete:v1

She could then push the re-named container to Docker Hub, using docker push alice/workflow-complete:v1

Key Points

• Dockerfiles specify what is within Docker images.

• The docker build command is used to build an image from a Dockerfile.

• You can share your Docker images through the Docker Hub so that others can create Docker containers from your images.