archlinux-bootstrap-docker

A Dockerfile that prepares an ArchLinux system from the bootstrap tarball provided by an ArchLinux mirror. The Dockerfile has a 'base' stage that can be directly targeted if you JUST want a base archlinux system without any extra configuration.

Build Arguments

There are several build arguments that can be provided to customize the output image, but none are required and defaults are provided in the Dockerfile.

• MIRROR_URL: The base url of the pacman mirror to use. (Default: "https://mnvoip.mm.fcix.net/archlinux")
• ADMIN_USER: A sudo-enabled non-root admin user to create. (Default: tux)
• DEFAULT_PASSWORD: The default password for the admin user. (Default: "archlinux")
• LOCALE_LANG: The locale to select. (Default: "en_US.UTF-8")
• WSL_HOSTNAME: If specified, /etc/wsl.conf will be created with the provided hostname entry and the default user will also be set to the ADMIN_USER. (Default: "")
• NO_DOCKER_GROUP: If specified, the admin user will not be added to the docker group. (Default: "")
• NO_BASHRC: If specified, my bashrc won't be installed for the admin user. (Default: "")
• NO_DEV_TOOLS: If specified, various bash/python/c++ development tools won't be installed. (Default: "")
• NO_CROSS_DEV_TOOLS: If specified, various gcc cross-compilation toolchains won't be installed. Automatically set if NO_DEV_TOOLS is specified. (Default: "")
• NO_NEOVIM_CONFIG: If specified, my neovim config won't be installed for the admin user. (Default: "")
• NO_YAY: If specified, the AUR management utility "yay" won't be installed. (Default: "")

Example Usage

The simplest use case is obtaining a docker image of an ArchLinux base system:

docker build -t archlinux-base --target base .

One of the most involved use cases is creating an ArchLinux distro within WSL.

docker build -t wsl-archlinux \
    --build-arg WSL_HOSTNAME=archlinux --build-arg ADMIN_USER=tux \
    .
docker create --name wsl-archlinux wsl-archlinux
docker export wsl-archlinux -o wsl-archlinux.tar
docker rm wsl-archlinux
docker rmi wsl-archlinux

Now you'll need to import the tar file into WSL from windows. Assuming you created C:\WSL and want your distro to be in C:\WSL\ArchLinux:

wsl --import ArchLinux C:\WSL\ArchLinux wsl-archlinux.tar

Then simply delete wsl-archlinux.tar. Note that because docker unavoidably forces a /.dockerenv file within the tar when you export it, combined with the fact that it forces it to be owned by root, you must elevate in order to remove it. You will be prompted for your user's password, which by default will be "archlinux":

wsl -d ArchLinux sudo rm /.dockerenv

Change the password to something secure:

wsl -d ArchLinux passwd

And then your WSL system should be imported and ready to use.

Win32Yank

Win32Yank is an awesome tool that lets neovim (if configured properly) yank to/paste from the Windows clipboard. However, there's a bug in WSL where sometimes using this program causes wsl.exe to use 100% CPU, and over time this happens a lot. There's an issue for this, caused by an upstream issue that suggests a solution; place win32yank.exe somewhere on your WINDOWS filesystem and NOT in linux. Older versions of this Dockerfile installed this into a the Linux filesystem, but now this feature has been removed. It is recommended to install this on Windows and add it to your system PATH ON WINDOWS because your Windows user's PATH is automatically included in your PATH in WSL. This solves the problem entirely. I use %USERPROFILE%/bin.

You can obtain the binary from the releases page, downloading win32yank-x64.zip and extracting the .exe file from it.

Recommendations

Immediately change the admin user's password to something other than the default. Don't specify the password you actually want to use in the DEFAULT_PASSWORD argument; arguments are stored as part of the image and it is best to avoid letting sensitive data into them. Simply change the password manually once using the system within WSL or wherever you intend.

Unless building with the 'base' target, reflector will be installed for easily optimizing the pacman mirrorlist. There's tons of ways to use this very versatile tool, but a simple and effective way to do so is to get the fastest mirrors within your country that have been recently updated. One such command is:

reflector --country US --protocol https \
    --age 24 --fastest 10 --sort rate | sudo tee /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Reflector has a "--save" argument where you can provide an output file path, but because reflector DOES NOT require root privileges it's best to only give it when writing the file.

Upgrading

Certain packages are installed for ONLY the admin user via "pipx", so in addition to updating your system via pacman, in order to update those you will need to run pipx as the admin user (NOT root).

In order to list packages installed via pipx, you can run pipx list and to upgrade all packages installed that way you can run pipx upgrade-all.

Extras

It is not really relevant to container/WSL usages, but I included a script called print_login_issue.sh which writes out a simple login prompt header for an archlinux framebuffer. It doesn't include any of the extra dynamic information you can include, and is just static text, but is a great start even if you wish to add more information. The intended usage of it is:

./print_login_issue.sh | sudo tee /etc/issue

This will overwrite the existing /etc/issue.