Why do I still get a warning about "Running pip as the 'root' user" inside a Docker container?

V.D.

Aug 5

0 views1

I made a simple image of my python Django app in Docker, using this Dockerfile:

FROM python:3.8-slim-buster

WORKDIR /app
COPY requirements.txt requirements.txt
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt
COPY . .
CMD ["python", "manage.py", "runserver", "0.0.0.0:8000"]

And building it using:

sudo docker build -t my_app:1 .

But after building the container (on Ubuntu 20.04) I get this warning:

WARNING: Running pip as the 'root' user can result in broken permissions and conflicting behaviour with the system package manager. It is recommended to use a virtual environment instead

Why does it throw this warning if I am installing Python requirements inside my image? Can I actually break my system this way?

docker

python pip

1 answer

Accepted answer · original discussion

markwalker_

Aug 5

Permalink

The way your container is built doesn't add a user, so everything is done as root.

You could create a user and install to that users's home directory by doing something like this;

FROM python:3.8.3-alpine

RUN pip install --upgrade pip

RUN adduser -D myuser
USER myuser
WORKDIR /home/myuser

COPY --chown=myuser:myuser requirements.txt requirements.txt
RUN pip install --user -r requirements.txt

ENV PATH="/home/myuser/.local/bin:${PATH}"

COPY --chown=myuser:myuser . .

CMD ["python", "manage.py", "runserver", "0.0.0.0:8000"]

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3 question comments

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user550701Permalink

Aug 31

"Do you understand what is causing the process to run as root?" The question is actually what is causing Pip to run as the 'root' user. It's not sudo. It's actually the docker default behavior. If you want RUN commands not to run as root, you have to add a user in the Dockerfile.