Base Docker image on Alpine Linux?

[riccardomurri]

Currently, ElastiCluster's Docker image is built on top of the official Python 27-slim image, totalling about 100MB (from a base image of 50MB).

Using the 2.7-alpine image, weighing at ~25MB for the base image, could provide some download time and disk space benefit.

However, some experience is need with Alpine and its package manager:

• what are the package names of Alpine Linux that provide the software that we currently install on the ElastiCluster docker image (esp. during the build/pip install part)
• are locations of critical configuration files and boot files the same?

[hefnawi]

Hello,

I would like to start working on the Docker image based on 2.7-alpine image. I will keep you updated with my progress, if that's alright.

Thanks,
Ahmed Hefnawi

[hefnawi]

So, I checked each of the packages via Alpine Linux packages, for example for curl:
https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=curl&branch=v3.4&repo=main&arch=x86_64

I used these commands for building and testing the docker image:

sudo docker build -t hefnawi/elasticluster:alpine .
sudo docker run --rm --interactive --tty hefnawi/elasticluster "--version"

Here is the output from the docker image, running the --version argument as indicated above:

elasticluster version 1.3.dev21

Also here is the stats for both of the docker images:
Note the image tagged latest is the one using 27-slim

REPOSITORY               TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
hefnawi/elasticluster    alpine              c0bc5204e0ed        3 seconds ago       430MB
hefnawi/elasticluster    latest              d2b36e4914a8        31 minutes ago      512MB

[riccardomurri]

hello @hefnawi

Many many thanks for your contribution! It's great to have somebody helping out and working on features of interest!

Can you please also try if other parts of ElastiCluster work well with the Alpine-based image? E.g. try starting a cluster, connect to it via SSH, destroy it. For the tests, you can just use the elasticluster.sh script, and change the upstream image riccardomurri/elasticluster to hefnawi/elasticluster.

Thanks,
R

[hefnawi]

Hi @riccardomurri

My pleasure, I am actually super glad I could contribute to elasticluster!

I will do that indeed and will let you know how it goes.

Thanks,
Hefnawi

[hefnawi]

I'm supposed to get that test going by end of January or before that, just wanted to let you know that I'm still on it =)

Thanks,
Hefnawi

[riccardomurri]

Excellent, thank you very much!