Interactive command in Dockerfile

Question

I'm trying to automate a creation of a development Docker image using docker build command with appropriate Dockerfile. One of the scripts that I need to run in a RUN command wants the user to click through and read their license agreement. Thus there are two questions:

Where is the output of all the RUN commands in a Dockerfile?
What solution is possible to interact with the aforementioned command? Right now the docker build command just gets stuck asking user for input in an infinite loop.

score 18 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 29 '16 at 06:54

You can also do it in several steps, begin with a Dockerfile with instructions until before the interactive part. Then

docker build -t image1 .

Now just

docker run -it --name image2 image1 /bin/bash

you have a shell inside, you can do your interactive commands, then do something like

docker commit image2 myuser/myimage:2.1

The doc for docker commit

https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/commit/

you may need to specify a new CMD or ENTRYPOINT, as stated in the doc

Commit a container with new CMD and EXPOSE instructions

For example some docker images using wine do it in several steps, install wine, then launch and configure the software launched in wine, then docker commit

Came here looking for this answer on how to rerun commands interactively in a in-progress Dockerfile — Morgan Christiansson, Jan 21 '19 at 05:51

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 28 '16 at 22:46

15

The output of RUN commands is shown in your terminal during the build. The Docker build process is completely non-interactive, so you must find some way of either auto-accepting the terms (almost every piece of software allows this, think apt-get install -y...) or using some shell wizardry to echo the acceptance back to the process or whatever (Expect maybe?).

answered Nov 28 '16 at 22:46

johnharris85

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Yes, I do use `-y` for `apt-get` type of applications. But this one is some commercial thing. – ilya1725 Nov 28 '16 at 22:48
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Yes, commercial things are usually really shitty ;) But I'd be surprised if they didn't have a non-interactive mode :) If not then look into Expect. – johnharris85 Nov 28 '16 at 23:32
I have similar issue. I am installing conda(arm based image is not available at present) in docker while building the image. Code looks like `RUN bash Anaconda3-2021.04-Linux-aarch64.sh` and that's where things go wrong because it requires entering multiple times yes. Any suggestion how it can be handled. – Vineet May 18 '21 at 12:04
Is there a link to how to use expect in the dockerfile? – Sidharth Ghoshal Jun 11 '21 at 17:08

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 06 '20 at 18:51

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You can use the technique here:

(echo "initial command" && cat) | some_tool

Or, if multiple stages use printf and concat with \n:

(printf "cmd1\ncmd2" && cat) | some_tool

answered Feb 06 '20 at 18:51

nikojpapa

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`(echo "passwword" && cat) | sudo ls ` doesn't work and I took sudo as a common example of an interactive tool. – Atomosk Jun 02 '20 at 04:58
@Atomosk Many console-based programs like `sudo` do not read sensitive data like passwords from stdin, but more directly from the terminal. You can use `-S` to make `sudo` read from stdin. – creativecoding Jun 18 '20 at 22:56
@creativecoding I know about -S, what is why I said that `sudo` is just an common example. Everyone can test and see that `echo` won't help you with that. – Atomosk Jun 20 '20 at 00:49

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 25 '21 at 00:49

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To see output of all commands during build, if they are not showing up in enough detail for you, try:

docker build --progress=plain --no-cache -t yourTag .

answered Aug 25 '21 at 00:49

Dmitri R117

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Interactive command in Dockerfile

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