Chainguard Image for bash

Container image with only Bash and libc. Suitable for running any small scripts or binaries that need Bash instead of the BusyBox shell.

Chainguard Images are regularly-updated, minimal container images with low-to-zero CVEs.

Download this Image

This image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/bash:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard registry.

Compatibility Notes

The Chainguard Bash image is meant to serve as a drop-in replacement for the official Bash image from Docker Hub. One notable difference between the Docker Hub image and Chainguard's Bash image is the location where bash is installed in the container. The Bash Image from Docker Hub has bash installed at /usr/local/bin/bash while Chainguard's has it installed at the standard /bin/bash.

Like most of Chainguard's images, the Bash image does not operate as the root user and includes only the minimum packages needed to function.

Getting Started

To open up an interactive shell in the Bash Image you could run a command like the following:

docker run -it cgr.dev/chainguard/bash:latest /bin/bash

To test scripts from your local machine on the Bash image, you can use a bind mount. The following example references a local script named local-script.sh, binds it to the container while renaming it container-script.sh, and then runs the script:

docker run -v /path/to/local-script.sh:/container-script.sh cgr.dev/chainguard/bash:latest /container-script.sh

You can also test scripts on the Bash image using a Dockerfile. The following example Dockerfile references a Bash script named test-script.sh:

FROM cgr.dev/chainguard/bash:latest

COPY test-script.sh /

CMD ["bash", "/test-script.sh"]

You could then build an image based off this Dockerfile:

docker build -t my-bash-app .

And then run the new image to test the script:

docker run -it --rm --name my-running-app my-bash-app

Documentation and Resources

• Vulnerability Comparison: bash
• (Tutorial) An Introduction to Shell Scripting

Contact Support

If you have a Zendesk account (typically set up for you by your Customer Success Manager) you can reach out to Chainguard's Customer Success team through our Zendesk portal.

What are Chainguard Images?

Chainguard Images are a collection of container images designed for security and minimalism.

Many Chainguard Images are distroless; they contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These images do not even contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Images are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Images include:

• Minimal design, with no unnecessary software bloat
• Automated nightly builds to ensure Images are completely up-to-date and contain all available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs (software bills of materials) attesting the provenance of all artifacts within the Image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

-dev Variants

As mentioned previously, Chainguard’s distroless Images have no shell or package manager by default. This is great for security, but sometimes you need these things, especially in builder images. For those cases, most (but not all) Chainguard Images come paired with a -dev variant which does include a shell and package manager.

Although the -dev image variants have similar security features as their distroless versions, such as complete SBOMs and signatures, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. The general recommendation is to use the -dev variants only to build the application and then copy all application artifacts into a distroless image, which will result in a final container image that has a minimal attack surface and won’t allow package installations or logins.

That being said, it’s worth noting that -dev variants of Chainguard Images are completely fine to run in production environments. After all, the -dev variants are still more secure than many popular container images based on fully-featured operating systems such as Debian and Ubuntu since they carry less software, follow a more frequent patch cadence, and offer attestations for what they include.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Images, we encourage you to visit Chainguard Academy, our documentation and education platform.