I have been getting some unexpected failures with the execution of my Docker images when running on my Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS machine. I'm using Docker version 18.02.0-ce (edge), installed from apt. I've narrowed down the problem enough to demonstrate it with this Dockerfile:
FROM tomcat:8.5.24-jre8-alpine
RUN adduser -D test
RUN chown -R test "$CATALINA_HOME"
USER test
RUN ls "$CATALINA_HOME"/webapps
When I attempt to build this, here's the result:
$ docker build -t test test/
Sending build context to Docker daemon 163.4MB
Step 1/5 : FROM tomcat:8.5.24-jre8-alpine
---> 134d23a9a14e
Step 2/5 : RUN adduser -D test
---> Using cache
---> a6f70ba83b8d
Step 3/5 : RUN chown -R test "$CATALINA_HOME"
---> Using cache
---> 8a0fae3db0a8
Step 4/5 : USER test
---> Using cache
---> 45fdf333232b
Step 5/5 : RUN ls "$CATALINA_HOME"/webapps
---> Running in 48711dfb9569
ls: /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/ROOT: Permission denied
ls: /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/examples: Permission denied
ls: /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/docs: Permission denied
ls: /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/host-manager: Permission denied
ls: /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/manager: Permission denied
The command '/bin/sh -c ls "$CATALINA_HOME"/webapps' returned a non-zero code: 1
These "Permission denied" errors are very strange to me, since the chown command should have given ownership of the whole /usr/local/tomcat folder, including the subfolders.
I have tried this same scenario with many different versions of Docker on my Ubuntu host, all with the same result. However, when I tried building this image on my Mac OS machine, it worked fine.
One slight variation that I have found which works around the problem is to give the "test" user access to the "root" group, like so:
RUN adduser -D test -G root
With this simple change, the Dockerfile builds. So it seems obvious to me that somehow group membership permissions are involved, but I can't imagine why that would matter since the user is the owner. Also I can't imagine why building on Linux is different than building on Mac OS.
- edit - This seems to be the same issue described here: https://github.com/docker-library/tomcat/issues/35
~/test $ docker build -t tomcat-test .It successfully listed everything in the 'webapps' dir. Try deleting the pulled image fortomcat:8.5.24-jre8-alpine(or even all your images) and rebuilding.docker system prune -ato clear the local cache. Unfortunately, the problem somehow persists. I assume you built on Linux?