dockerdocker-volumeminimum-sizescratch-file

"docker container create" with "nothing" inside. Ie: An empty / void / null / scratch container


It might be helpful to create a container that has nothing. Nothing means nothing.

Use case

In this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/55683656/1315009 a container is created without ever starting it just to instantiate a volume and copy contents into the volume. Then the container is removed.

The example instantiates a busybox. Nevertheless the busybox contents are never used. So I tested it with the hello-world and it works as well, thus reducing from 1.22MB to 13.3kB.

At the time being, pulling "scratch" fails:

$ docker pull scratch
Using default tag: latest
Error response from daemon: 'scratch' is a reserved name

So... Question

How can I create a container with an image that has "nothing" inside?

I mean similar to docker create hello-world but without the hello-world binary.


Solution

  • Inspired on @BMitch's answer, the solution is that the Dockerfile can not only contain the FROM sentence.

    It compiles, but fails when doing a docker create, the engine complains because it does not have a command even if it's a create and not a run.

    The complete Dockerfile is this one:

    FROM scratch
    CMD ""
    

    You can build it (in my case I named the image xavi-scratch) and then see the image is 0 bytes of data:

    $ docker image ls | grep xavi-scratch
    xavi-scratch    latest    bee1419a6d83    N/A    0B
    

    image contains 0 bytes of data

    I then create a container without running it:

    docker create -v ${PWD}/whatever-dir:/data --name test-scratch xavi-scratch
    

    There's a full session here testing it serves the purpose:

    1. Setup 2 empty dirs a and b and create one file in a.
    2. Check b is empty
    3. Create this container from the empty image, mounting b.
    4. Copy the file from a into the container
    5. Check b contains the file copied via the container.

    Test