This page attempts to document how to create a Debian image for Docker.

The following is work in progress WITHOUT ANY WARANTY

The docker.io package ships the /usr/share/docker.io/contrib/mkimage-debootstrap.sh script which may be used to create a Docker image for Debian (or Ubuntu) using debootstrap, and with or without further tweaks.

Note that due to bug #740855 /usr/share/docker.io/contrib/mkimage-debootstrap.sh needs to be patched at the moment.

You may create an image for the stable suite (using the minbase debootstrap variant) with :

.../mkimage-debootstrap.sh $USER/minbase stable

The image may then be used with :

sudo docker.io run -i $USER/minbase:stable echo "hello world"

See also http://www.debian-administration.org/article/696/A_brief_introduction_to_using_docker#a2 if you want to use a manual debootstrap install (without the upstream's contrib script's tweaks).

A dockerfile may also directly the following directive :

FROM debian:sid

References