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Alpaquita LinuxStreamHow To
Getting Started With Images
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Alpaquita Linux: Getting started with images

1. Overview

Docker

Docker is a containerization platform for building, sharing, and running your applications. Docker applications run in containers that can be used on any system: a laptop, desktop systems, servers, or in the cloud. A container is a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies, so the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another. Docker provides a set of tools for building and sharing container images, and running containers at any scale.

For more information, visit Docker website.

Podman

Podman is a daemonless, open-source Linux native tool designed to make it easy to find, run, build, share, and deploy applications using Open Containers Initiative (OCI) Containers and Container Images. Containers under the control of Podman can either be run by root or by a non-privileged user.

For more information, visit Podman website.

Liberica JDK

Liberica JDK is a TCK-verified 100 % open source progressive Java runtime from a major OpenJDK contributor. Liberica JDK supports an extensive range of system configurations and runs seamlessly in multiple virtual and cloud environments. Quarterly CPU and PSU releases in line with the OpenJDK release schedule help to preserve the runtime stability and security. For more information, visit Liberica JDK page.

2. Images

BellSoft provides a number of Docker images with Alpaquita Linux. They are hosted on the Docker Hub Container Image Library available at https://hub.docker.com/u/bellsoft. Typically, downloading publicly available images does not require authentication.

Note:
 This chapter provides examples with the Docker tool. Podman provides a command-line interface similar to the Docker Container Engine. For more information, see Configuring Podman to run containers on Alpaquita Linux.

Available images

Images are grouped in several repositories, and each repository contains a number of tags. Each tag points to a Docker image.

To create a container from an image with a tag <image_tag> stored in a repository <repository>, do one of the following.

  • Download the image using docker pull:

    docker image pull docker bellsoft/<repository>:<image_tag>

    and start a container from that image with docker run:

    docker run -it --rm bellsoft/<repository>:<image_tag>

  • Instead of two consecutive commands, you can combine two operations in a single docker run execution:

    docker container run --rm -it bellsoft/<repository>:<image_tag>

    For example:

    docker container run --rm -it bellsoft/alpaquita-linux-base:23-musl

If the :<image_tag> part is omitted, it is implicitly substituted with :latest, that is the command is executed with the latest tag.

The description of available repositories and images is provided below.

alpaquita-linux-base

The repository contains base Alpaquita Linux images.

The following are available tags for images based on musl or glibc Alpaquita Linux version.

Images with the latest release in the LTS release series are:

  • 23-musl

  • 23-glibc

Images with the latest release in the stream release series are:

  • stream-musl

  • stream-glibc

For example:

docker run --rm bellsoft/alpaquita-linux-base:23-musl cat /etc/os-release

NAME="BellSoft Alpaquita Linux LTS"
ID=alpaquita
ID_LIKE=alpine
VERSION_ID=23.0
PRETTY_NAME="BellSoft Alpaquita Linux LTS 23.0 (musl)"
HOME_URL="https://bell-sw.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bell-sw.com/support/"
ALPAQUITA_LIBC=musl

alpaquita-linux-gcc

The repository contains images with the GCC compiler, tools, and libraries for development in C/C++.

The following are available tags for images based on musl or glibc Alpaquita Linux version.

Image with the latest GCC are:

  • 12.2-musl

  • 12.2-glibc

For example:

docker run --rm bellsoft/alpaquita-linux-gcc:12.2-glibc gcc --version
gcc (Alpaquita 12.2.1_git20220924-r5) 12.2.1 20220924
Copyright (C) 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

alpaquita-linux-python

The repository contains images with Python and accompanying tools (such as pip3, wheel, setuptools).

The following are available tags for images based on musl or glibc Alpaquita Linux version.

Images with the latest Python 3.11.x version are:

  • 3.11-musl

  • 3.11-glibc

For example:

docker run --rm bellsoft/alpaquita-linux-python:3.11-glibc python3 --version
Python 3.11.4

liberica-runtime-container

The repository contains Alpaquita Linux images with preinstalled Liberica JDK.

Java 8 JRE and Java 8 JDK images contain Liberica JDK. JRE and JDK images with Java 11, Java 17, and Java 21 additionally contain Liberica JDK Lite. Also, the stream version includes images with prebuilt Class data sharing (CDS) technology. The latest additions to the family of Liberica images are JRE and JDK images for Java 17 and 21 with Checkpoint and Restore (CRaC) feature. Regular and slim images are available for each such combination.

Note:
 Slim images do not include the apk tools, and the layers in the image are additionally compressed. These modifications reduce the size of the final image in the registry and make it impossible to install additional software in the image using standard OS tools to improve security.
Tags

Liberica image tag structure is the following:

[JDK type]-Java version-[crac]-[cds]-[slim]-[OS version]-[libc type]-[date]
TagDescription

JDK type

jre or jdk bundle type

Java version

Java version string. The Java version can be specified in three variants:

  • Major version, such as 8, 11, or 17

  • Release version, such as 11.0.20

  • Full version (with build number), such as 11.0.20_9 that corresponds to 11.0.20+9

crac

The image provides a JDK with Coordinated Restore at Checkpoint feature.

cds

The Alpaquita version that includes images with prebuilt Shared Archive technology. Currently available for stream version.

slim

Slim images that are smaller and do not include an OS package manager.

OS version

The Alpaquita version, such as 23 for the LTS version or stream for the stream version.

libc type

Either glibc or musl C Runtime Library.

date

Image release date (YYMMDD)

Tag examples:

bellsoft/liberica-runtime-container:[JDK type]-Java version-[crac]-[cds]-[slim]-[OS release]-[libc type]-[date]

  • jdk-17-glibc - a JDK Java 17 glibc image

  • jre-21-crac-slim-glibc - a slim Glibc image with Liberica 21 CRaC JRE.

  • jre-11-slim-musl - a JRE Java 11 slim image with musl

  • jre-8u372_7-slim-stream-glibc-230425 - a JRE Java 8u273p7 slim Alpaquita Linux stream glibc image released on April 23 2023.

Command example:

docker run --rm bellsoft/liberica-runtime-container:jre-11-musl java -version
openjdk version "11.0.19" 2023-04-18 LTS
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 11.0.19+7-LTS)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 11.0.19+7-LTS, mixed mode)

liberica-native-image-kit-container

The repository contains images that come with Liberica Native Image Kit (NIK) 22.3 software. The images contain JDK 11 or JDK 17 and native-image components.

The following are available tags based on the corresponding Alpaquita Linux version with musl or glibc libraries.

Images with NIK 22.3.2:

  • jdk-11-nik-22.3-glibc

  • jdk-11-nik-22.3-musl

  • jdk-17-nik-22.3-glibc

  • jdk-17-nik-22.3-musl

For example:

docker run --rm bellsoft/liberica-native-image-kit-container:jdk-17-nik-22-musl
native-image --version
GraalVM 22.3.2 Java 17 CE (Java Version 17.0.7+7-LTS)

Configuring Podman to run containers

Alpaquita Linux can act as a host system for running containers.Docker and Podman tools are included in the package, which can be installed from the package repository. The setup is different for different tools. The following section describes how to set up the Podman tool. The setup includes the following steps:

  1. Run the following command:

    sudo apk add fuse-overlay podman

  2. Set /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid values to specify the range of UIDs for users and allow Podman to run containers in the appropriate user namespace.

  3. Since Alpaquita Linux does not use systemd, you may need to run the following command:

    sudo mount --make-rshared /

  4. Run the following command to set up cgroups:

    sudo rc-update add cgroups; sudo rc-service cgroups start

  5. To enable cgroups V2, edit /etc/rc.conf and enable the "unified" option for rc_cgroup_mode.

  6. Load the modules that are not loaded by default:

    sudo modprobe tun; sudo modprobe fuse

Now you can use Podman to run containers with BellSoft images.

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