How to prevent creating container from a docker image?

Question

I'd like to build a docker image which will the base of my containers, but I'd like to prevent creating a container directly from it. Is it possible?

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 02 '20 at 18:44

2

Every image (except scratch, which is a special case) can be used to create a container, so no it's not possible.

answered Sep 02 '20 at 18:44

Konrad Botor

141
4

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 02 '20 at 20:44

1

As a possible workaround you may add

ENTRYPOINT false

to clearly state the you want anyone to run containers from it. Of course, it doesn't prevent container creation, but...

answered Sep 02 '20 at 20:44

deman_killer

38
6

I didn't think so... It is perfect for me. – Sep 03 '20 at 08:48

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 02 '20 at 19:08

You can't prevent creating a container from your images, but you can prevent the container from running anything. Simply don't include anything runnable in the container.

An example of a base image that does this is centurylink/ca-certs (which is horribly out of date; don't use it for its intended purpose). It is based on scratch and its only content is a CA certificate bundle file. It is not possible to run anything from this container as it contains no scripts or executables.

How to prevent creating container from a docker image?

3 Answers3