archlinux-small

On Docker hub archlinux-small on Github docker-archlinux-small

This small layer adds 27 MB to the 119 MB Arch Linux base container archlinux-tiny Still extremely small compared to other Arch Linux containers with some more features and packages above the tiny one. The goal this was to have a more usable base that just worked without having to install dependencies for normal tasks as well as some normal tools I like working with. It also has some amazing repos like BlackArch and BBQLinux.

Updated: 10/29/2016

Docker Images Structure

yantis/archlinux-tiny

yantis/archlinux-small

yantis/archlinux-small-ssh-hpn

yantis/ssh-hpn-x

yantis/dynamic-video

yantis/virtualgl

yantis/wine

Added Features

Lots of linux utlities that were not included in the tiny version. See list below.
util-linux & iputils
user:docker password:docker with password-less sudo.
locate/updatedb (mlocate)
[S6 supervisor] (http://skarnet.org/software/s6/) - (Les Aker's code)
[execline] (http://skarnet.org/software/execline/)
zsh with oh-my-zsh setup for both root and docker users.
htop
vim (vim-tiny)

Features (from archlinux-tiny)

Arch Linux 64 bit core, extra, community repos
Arch Linux 32 bit multilib repo
BBQLinux repo for Android Developers.
BlackArch repo for penetration testers and security professionals.
Arch Linux CN repo
[Reflector] (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Reflector) mirror optimized for western USA.
cower and package-query for interacting with the AUR.
compact (removal of a lot of unneeded stuff that pacman will auto re-install if needed)

As an example this is a search for chrome with the above repos installed (Screenshot is from April 2015)

Added packages

diffutils
execline
expac
file
gcc-libs
gdbm
grep
gzip
htop
iputils
less
libsystemd
lz4
mlocate
oh-my-zsh-git
patch
pcre
procps-ng-nosystemd
s6
sed
shadow
sudo
sysfsutils
tar
util-linux
vim-tiny
wget
zsh

How did you get it so small.

The biggest win was the removal of Perl at 40MB. Perl is needed for two things on the base Arch Linux install OpenSSL (it shouldn't be honestly since it isn't really used other than for one small thing on Windows) Some other distros have already fixed this [issue] (NixOS/nixpkgs#6763) like NixOS Also, see this thread and this. And for texinfo (8 MB) which we patched out with a fake stub.

As well as a lot of aggressively cleaning of info, doc and man pages as well as stripping out the non English international stuff.

Caveats

This is slimmed down as much as possible while still having full pacman functionality to install any package needed.

Where it might break is all but the English locales have been removed, as well as any terminfo configs that are not xterm based. Do not expect any info, documents or manual pages to exist locally either as those have been purged as well.

I am currently experimenting with the removal of zoneinfo and i18n and no problems so far.

Anything you install with pacman should just install fine but if you want to install something from the AUR you are going to need to install dev tools first like make, gcc, autoconf etc.

Miscellaneous

To save on space the pacman databases are purged. You need run pacman -Sy at least once before using pacman.

RUN pacman -Sy

If you are building a package from the AUR you will want to install and uninstall the dev tools like this.

RUN sudo pacman -S --noconfirm yaourt binutils gcc make autoconf fakeroot && \
    yaourt -S --noconfirm procps-ng-nosystemd && \
    pacman --noconfirm -Rs yaourt binutils gcc make autoconf fakeroot

This image has a user docker with the password docker. You will most likely want to change the password. Just add this line to your Dockerfile.

RUN echo -e "docker\nyournewpassword" | passwd docker

The mirrors are optimized for US West If you want it for your area just add this to the top of your Dockerfile.

RUN pacman -S reflector --noconfirm && \
    reflector --verbose -l 5 --protocol https --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist && \
    pacman -Rs reflector --noconfirm

The different repositories have a lot of really nice packages. To get a list just run package-query like this.

package-query -Sl blackarch

yantis/docker-archlinux-small