Chainguard Image for wolfi-base

Base image for the Wolfi Linux Distribution.

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/wolfi-base:latest

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

Usage

The Chainguard wolfi-base Image includes a shell and package manager. The Image will start in a shell by default:

docker run -it cgr.dev/chainguard/wolfi-base

6d38c9b4f0d9:/#

You can run commands from within the shell like this, or you can run commands directly on your local machine without opening a shell:

docker run cgr.dev/chainguard/wolfi-base ps

PID   USER     TIME  COMMAND
    1 root      0:00 ps

This Image is commonly used in Dockerfiles, as in the following example:

FROM cgr.dev/chainguard/wolfi-base

RUN apk update && apk add redis

ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/bin/redis-server"]

This example Dockerfile will update apk and install the Redis server onto the base Image.

You could use a Dockerfile like this to build a new image:

docker build -t myredis --progress plain --no-cache .

#0 building with "desktop-linux" instance using docker driver

#1 [internal] load .dockerignore
#1 transferring context: 656B done
#1 DONE 0.0s

#2 [internal] load build definition from Dockerfile
#2 transferring dockerfile: 144B done
#2 DONE 0.0s

#3 [internal] load metadata for cgr.dev/chainguard/wolfi-base:latest
#3 DONE 0.0s

#4 [1/2] FROM cgr.dev/chainguard/wolfi-base
#4 CACHED

#5 [2/2] RUN apk update && apk add redis
#5 0.104 fetch https://packages.wolfi.dev/os/aarch64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
#5 0.702  [https://packages.wolfi.dev/os]
#5 0.702 OK: 14620 distinct packages available
#5 0.750 (1/1) Installing redis (7.2.0-r0)
#5 1.207 OK: 15 MiB in 15 packages
#5 DONE 1.2s

#6 exporting to image
#6 exporting layers 0.0s done
#6 writing image sha256:bde1c89d952e0e0155acb410ee8143b1daf542bd36a6b22c032250633d08bf76 done
#6 naming to docker.io/library/myredis done
#6 DONE 0.0s

Following that, you can run the new image built from the wolfi-base Image.

docker run myredis

Further Reading

To learn more, we encourage you to visit Chainguard Academy which contains extensive documentation on getting started with Wolfi.

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.