Why do Atlassian Docker images run as root?

Question

It's generally bad practice for Docker images to run as root.  However, the official Bitbucket and Confluence Server images run as root.

Unfortunately, if you're using an enterprise container management platform (we're using OpenShift), containers that run as root aren't even allowed to start.  This is for securtiy purposes.  Most people aren't willing to turn off security features in a production environment in order to run a docker image.

Is there any plans to fix this in the near future?

The image is set to run on a high port, so there shouldn't be much issue in running this as a non-root (or daemon) user, right?

Idan atCox · Answer

@Rhätische Bahn AG please vote on https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BSERV-12531 to promote nonroot Docker image

Rhätische Bahn AG · Answer

recent changes made the situation even worse. This part in the entrypoint.py file:

def gen_cfg(tmpl, target, env, user='root', group='root', mode=0o644, overwrite=True):

makes it definitely impossible to run the image as a non-root user.

@Michael Rose any chances that this is getting reworked in the near future?

Thanks

baacreations · Answer

Any update on this? I'm also interested in running this container as a non-root user.

Thanks