This is an alpine container which suppport s6 or openrc as init system. The container need utmps service and ssh service. The sshd service is used to support remote login. The utmps services is used to support last and who command.

I came cross s6 because utmps need a process supervisor. utmps is required because default alpine doesn't support utmpx.h API. I tried s6 first, after several days study, it turns out to be that s6-rc and s6-overlay is what I need for container. With the help from utmps document, I built a s6-rc container for utmps. Eventually, s6-rc container has all the required packages, except the utmps init script. That means the container cant't support last and who command, even if the container has all the necessary services.

openrc is the next effort. Got a clue from this post. Then a dockerfile in github.com help me to build the openrc container. This time the container can support last and who command.

Compare s6-rc container and openrc container, utmps-openrc package is the key to provide init script for openrc container. Maybe you can find the solution from the utmps-openrc package. The following is the content of utmps-openrc:

openrc-ssh:/etc/init.d# apk info -a utmps-openrc
utmps-openrc-0.1.2.1-r1 description:
A secure utmp/wtmp implementation (OpenRC init scripts)

utmps-openrc-0.1.2.1-r1 webpage:
https://skarnet.org/software/utmps/

utmps-openrc-0.1.2.1-r1 installed size:
32 KiB

utmps-openrc-0.1.2.1-r1 depends on:

utmps-openrc-0.1.2.1-r1 provides:

utmps-openrc-0.1.2.1-r1 is required by:

utmps-openrc-0.1.2.1-r1 contains:
etc/init.d/btmpd
etc/init.d/utmp-init
etc/init.d/utmp-prepare
etc/init.d/utmpd
etc/init.d/wtmpd

utmps-openrc-0.1.2.1-r1 triggers:

utmps-openrc-0.1.2.1-r1 has auto-install rule:
openrc
utmps=0.1.2.1-r1

utmps-openrc-0.1.2.1-r1 affects auto-installation of:

utmps-openrc-0.1.2.1-r1 replaces:

utmps-openrc-0.1.2.1-r1 license:
ISC

If you check the utmps-openrc package, you will find the utmp-init, utmp-prepare script.

I don't have enough time to research all available init system. There is some articles to compare the init systems:

• A new service manager for Linux distributions
• Why another supervision suite ?
• Why s6-rc ?
• Comparison of init systems
• systemd bad for dev and gentoo?.

This container use openrc as the init system. It also support utmpd, wtmpd and sshd service on boot.

Run the following command to build the openrc container. Check here if you don't understand hwo to generate ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file.

% docker build --build-arg ROOT_PWD=passowrd \
	--build-arg USER_PWD=password \
	--build-arg SSH_PUB_KEY="$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)" \
	--progress plain -t openrc-ssh:0.1.0 -f openrc.dockerfile .

Run the following command to start the container.

% docker run --env TZ=Asia/Shanghai --tty --privileged --volume /sys/fs/cgroup:/sys/fs/cgroup:ro \
  -h openrc-ssh --name openrc-ssh -d -p 5022:22 openrc-ssh:0.1.0

Run the following command to login in to the container.

% rm ~/.ssh/known_hosts ~/.ssh/known_hosts.old
% ssh -p 5022 root@localhost

Login in to the container and run setup-utmp init script for utmps. unfortunately I can't find the right way to run setup-utmp at building image time.

% setup-utmp

Finally, you need to reboot the container and login in again. Now you can run who and last command.

openrc-ssh:/etc/init.d# who
root            pts/1           00:00   May 13 18:46:42  172.17.0.1
openrc-ssh:/etc/init.d# last
USER       TTY            HOST               LOGIN        TIME
ide        pts/2          172.17.0.1         May 13 18:47
root       pts/1          172.17.0.1         May 13 18:46
reboot     system boot    5.15.49-linuxkit   May 13 18:47

You can check the init system and required services with the following command.

openrc-ssh:/etc/init.d# pstree -p
init(1)-+-s6-ipcserverd(154)
        |-s6-ipcserverd(217)
        |-s6-ipcserverd(245)
        `-sshd(190)---sshd(286)---ash(288)---pstree(338)

check the build.md for how to build image and run container.

s6 is the base, it is best used in virtual machine environment instead of docker container. s6-overlay is the s6 wrapper for docker container environment.

Alpine and other linux distribution support s6 related package. For example, on alpine there are full set of s6 package available.

# apk search s6
s6-portable-utils-2.3.0.2-r1
s6-networking-2.5.1.3-r1
s6-2.11.3.2-r1
s6-rc-0.5.4.1-r1
s6-dns-doc-2.3.5.5-r1
s6-dns-2.3.5.5-r1
s6-dns-dev-2.3.5.5-r1
s6-ipcserver-2.11.3.2-r1
s6-portable-utils-doc-2.3.0.2-r1
s6-linux-utils-2.6.1.2-r1
s6-networking-man-pages-2.5.1.3.3-r0
s6-overlay-helpers-0.1.0.1-r0
s6-linux-init-static-1.1.1.1-r0
s6-openrc-2.11.3.2-r1
s6-linux-init-1.1.1.1-r0
s6-rc-doc-0.5.4.1-r1
s6-networking-dev-2.5.1.3-r1
s6-dns-static-2.3.5.5-r1
s6-overlay-doc-3.1.5.0-r0
s6-dev-2.11.3.2-r1
s6-overlay-3.1.5.0-r0
s6-doc-2.11.3.2-r1
s6-static-2.11.3.2-r1
s6-linux-init-doc-1.1.1.1-r0
s6-linux-utils-doc-2.6.1.2-r1
s6-networking-static-2.5.1.3-r1
s6-man-pages-2.11.3.2.4-r0
s6-rc-static-0.5.4.1-r1
s6-overlay-syslogd-3.1.5.0-r0
s6-rc-man-pages-0.5.4.1.2-r0
s6-linux-init-man-pages-1.1.1.0.1-r0
s6-portable-utils-man-pages-2.3.0.2.2-r0
s6-rc-dev-0.5.4.1-r1
s6-linux-init-dev-1.1.1.1-r0
s6-networking-doc-2.5.1.3-r1

While the origianl s6-overlay site suggest tar.xz installation. Such as:

# extract s6-overlay
#
ADD https://github.com/just-containers/s6-overlay/releases/download/v${S6_OVERLAY_VERSION}/s6-overlay-noarch.tar.xz /tmp/s6/
RUN tar xf /tmp/s6/s6-overlay-noarch.tar.xz -C /
ADD https://github.com/just-containers/s6-overlay/releases/download/v${S6_OVERLAY_VERSION}/s6-overlay-x86_64.tar.xz /tmp/s6/
RUN tar xf /tmp/s6/s6-overlay-x86_64.tar.xz -C /
RUN rm -rf /tmp/s6

For alpine, s6-overlay package is more convinient for us. The following docker command is much more simple.

RUN apk add --no-cache --update openssh-server s6-overlay

s6-overlay support running sshd as supervised process in the follwoing way. In this way, the container will execute ENTRYPOINT first, then the system will execute CMD part.

CMD ["/usr/sbin/sshd", "-D"]

# start s6-overlay
#
ENTRYPOINT ["/init"]

With the tar ball installation, the s6-overlay is installed under /command and /package directory. utmps give an example s6-rc configuration. You need to change shebangs line to respect the above installation.

The origianl content of utmpd/run script:

#!/bin/execlineb -P

fdmove -c 2 1
s6-setuidgid utmp
cd /run/utmps
fdmove 1 3
s6-ipcserver -1 -- /run/utmps/utmpd-socket
utmps-utmpd

The modified content of utmpd/run script, keep your eye on the first shebangs line. Without the modification, your run script is not executeable.

#!/command/execlineb -P

fdmove -c 2 1
s6-setuidgid utmp
cd /run/utmps
fdmove 1 3
s6-ipcserver -1 -- /run/utmps/utmpd-socket
utmps-utmpd

• s6-example
• Docker and S6 – My New Favorite Process Supervisor
• Building a skarnet.org s6 Init System
• Quickstart and FAQ for s6-linux-init
• An overview of s6
• s6 overlay
• S6 Made Easy, with the S6 Overlay
• How to understand S6 Overlay v3