Docker: How To Debug Distroless And Slim Containers

Slim containers are faster (less stuff to move around) and more secure (fewer places for vulnerabilities to sneak in). However, these benefits of slim containers come at a price - such containers lack (the much-needed at times) exploration and debugging tools. It might be quite challenging to tap into a container that was built from a distroless or slim base image or was minified using DockerSlim or alike. Over the years, I've learned a few tricks how to troubleshoot slim containers, and it's time for me to share.

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In Pursuit of Better Container Images: Alpine, Distroless, Apko, Chisel, DockerSlim, oh my!

Many of us these days seem to be in pursuit of better container images. And this is for good reasons! Bloated images with many (potentially unneeded) moving parts slow down development and give more space for a CVE to sneak in. Luckily, there is a number of ways to produce slim and secure images, and everyone just needs to pick their poison a suitable one. But before doing so, it's good to become aware of a potential dissonance between what we say is important for us (securing our software supply chains) and what may actually drive our decisions (keeping out dev loops fast).

Containers - theory vs. practice.

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