Docker Alpine /bin/sh apk not found

Question

I am building a new Docker image with:

FROM alpine:3.4
RUN apk upgrade --update

However, its failing with the error:

[INFO] /bin/sh: apk: not found

This seems to work fine on my local machine (Mac OSX) but when I try building it on a Linux CentOS 7 machine it fails.

Can you check `docker images` and check the ID of `alpine:3.4`? On a fresh Docker host I get `baa5d63471ea`. — Elton Stoneman, Oct 26 '16 at 14:01
I can confirm that docker images returns baa5d63471ea also for me — mchinaloy, Oct 26 '16 at 14:03
I'm thinking now that it might be due to the Maven plugin we are using to build our images (https://github.com/alexec/docker-maven-plugin). I did a docker build and it works okay. — mchinaloy, Oct 26 '16 at 15:25
Could be. Try this: `mvn -Ddocker.cache=false` (from the [DEBUG](https://github.com/alexec/docker-maven-plugin/blob/master/DEBUG.md) page to make sure there's not a bad image cached. — Elton Stoneman, Oct 26 '16 at 15:30
@MikeChinaloy Did you find its answer? I am also facing same issue. — Jass, Feb 12 '18 at 06:52
@jass I fixed this by using a more recent version of the docker-maven-plugin — mchinaloy, Feb 14 '18 at 13:46
Possible duplicate of [/bin/sh: 1: apk: not found while creating docker image](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40445243/bin-sh-1-apk-not-found-while-creating-docker-image) — Vishrant, Nov 16 '18 at 22:55
@MikeChinaloy you should post an answer to your own question with your solution and accept it — Thomasleveil, Mar 02 '19 at 09:38

Robert J · Answer 1 · 2021-07-02T13:05:08.063

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I ran into something like this. It completely blew my mind, and I was questioning my sanity for a bit until I realized that /sbin wasn't in my container's PATH.

# interactive session
PATH="${PATH}:/sbin"

# Dockerfile
ENV PATH="${PATH}:/sbin"

If you type command -v apk in an interactive session in your container's base image and compare that directory with the container's $PATH that should get you squared away.

If command -v apk doesn't work for you, you could try to find it via

find / -name apk -type f -exec dirname "{}" ";"

To the best of my knowledge this is always in /sbin. However you get there, just ensure that the apk binary's location is part of $PATH

TL;DR - If you see this error, ensure that your executable's dirname is in your $PATH

edited Jul 02 '21 at 13:05

answered May 19 '19 at 22:25

Robert J

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Just what I needed, thanks! `/sbin` was not in the path for me, either. – WhatIsHeDoing Jun 28 '19 at 14:23
docker 10.10.17, is alpine 3.15 image, no apk, sbin is empty. it may be because the client cleaned it out, its a client image, and it prob was stripped to bare essentials(partially even for security), would this make sense? this is a prometheus only image also, if that rings any bells to anyone . EDIT, maybe this isnt alpine, and no -release file anywhere.. (no apk,yum,apt,dnf,pacman,etc..) – blamb Oct 13 '22 at 17:10

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 05 '19 at 10:01

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In the end we upgraded our projects to use this Docker Maven plugin: https://github.com/fabric8io/fabric8-maven-plugin. No issue thus far.

answered Mar 05 '19 at 10:01

mchinaloy

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Could you detail how it solved your issue? It's not obvious but I'm curious since I have the same original issue :) – user1075613 Sep 20 '22 at 14:12

Docker Alpine /bin/sh apk not found

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