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UID of nonroot user in distroless container images

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Distroless images use a user called nonroot by convention. What's the UID (User ID) of this user?

This is relevant in multi-stage image builds:

FROM bash:latest as builder

RUN adduser adduser \
  --disabled-password \
  --gecos "" \
  --home "/nonexistent" \
  --shell "/sbin/nologin" \
  --no-create-home \
  --uid "???" \
  "nonroot"
USER nonroot

WORKDIR /app

# Simulating a build here
RUN echo binary > executable


# A distroless base image for static executables.
# It uses the nonroot user:
# https://edu.chainguard.dev/chainguard/chainguard-images/reference/glibc-dynamic/image_specs/
FROM cgr.dev/chainguard/cc-dynamic:latest

WORKDIR /app

COPY --from builder /app/executable ./

CMD "/app/executable"

The UIDs need to match in the builder stage and the final image.

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2 answers

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The UID of nonroot user is 65532.

This is by convention.

I failed to find a reputable source for this, but looking around image internals, it seems to hold.

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You don't actually need the UID in that particular example.

A more elegant solution would be to use the --chown option of the COPY directive.

FROM bash:latest as builder

RUN adduser adduser \
  --disabled-password \
  --gecos "" \
  --home "/nonexistent" \
  --shell "/sbin/nologin" \
  --no-create-home \
  "nonroot"
USER nonroot

WORKDIR /app

# Simulating a build here
RUN echo binary > executable


# A distroless base image for static executables.
# It uses the nonroot user:
# https://edu.chainguard.dev/chainguard/chainguard-images/reference/glibc-dynamic/image_specs/
FROM cgr.dev/chainguard/cc-dynamic:latest

WORKDIR /app

# This eliminates the need for UIDs.
COPY --from builder --chown=nonroot /app/executable ./

CMD "/app/executable"
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