docker run fails when importing archive/tar in golang

Question

I'm trying to get a golang program that runs on the cmd line to run in a docker container, but importing archive/tar causes errors.

This works:


    package main
    import (
            "fmt"
    )
    func main() {
            fmt.Println("success!")
    }

producing the output:

    liam gotest $ docker run -it gotest
    success!

This does not:


    package main
    import (
            "archive/tar"
            "fmt"
    )
    var _ = tar.TypeReg
    func main() {
            fmt.Println("success!")
    }

producing the output:


    liam gotest $ docker run -it gotest
    standard_init_linux.go:207: exec user process caused "no such file or directory"

This is my Dockerfile:


    FROM scratch
    WORKDIR /app
    COPY . /app
    CMD ["./test"]

I'm running:

go version go1.11.4 linux/amd64
Docker version 18.09.1, build 4c52b90
ubuntu 18.04LTS

I'd appreciate any suggestions.

Solved by vishnu narayanan:

I used

`CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux go build -a -installsuffix cgo test.go`

to build a static executable, and it worked.

vishnu narayanan vishnu narayanan · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-21T05:21:38

Why ?

This is because of the default go build behavior. The compiled binary is still looking for libraries in the system path due to dynamic linking.

Since scratch is empty, the binary is not able to find the system libraries and throws an error.

How to solve this ?

Modify the build script to produce a static compiled build with all libraries built in.

CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux go build -a -installsuffix cgo -o main .

Use the output binary from above build for the docker container.

docker run fails when importing archive/tar in golang

1 Answers