How to get /etc/profile to run automatically in Alpine / Docker

Question

How can I get /etc/profile to run automatically when starting an Alpine Docker container interactively? I have added some aliases to an aliases.sh

Answer 1

You still can try in your Dockerfile a:

RUN echo '\
        . /etc/profile ; \
    ' >> /root/.profile

(assuming the current user is root. If not, replace /root with the full home path)

That being said, those /etc/profile.d/xx.sh should run.
See codeclimate/docker-alpine-ruby as an example:

COPY files /

With 'files/etc" including an files/etc/profile.d/rubygems.sh running just fine.

---

In the OP project Dockerfile, there is a

COPY aliases.sh /etc/profile.d/

But the default shell is not a login shell (sh -l), which means profile files (or those in /etc/profile.d) are not sourced.

Adding sh -l would work:

docker@default:~$ docker run --rm --name ruby -it codeclimate/alpine-ruby:b42 sh -l
87a58e26b744:/# echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0/bin