Go-compiled binary won't run in an alpine docker container on Ubuntu host

By default, if using the net package a build will likely produce a binary with some dynamic linking, e.g. to libc. You can inspect dynamically vs. statically link by viewing the result of ldd output.bin

There are two solutions I've come across:

• Disable CGO, via CGO_ENABLED=0
• Force the use of the Go implementation of net dependencies, netgo via go build -tags netgo -a -v, this is implemented for a certain platforms

From https://golang.org/doc/go1.2:

The net package requires cgo by default because the host operating system must in general mediate network call setup. On some systems, though, it is possible to use the network without cgo, and useful to do so, for instance to avoid dynamic linking. The new build tag netgo (off by default) allows the construction of a net package in pure Go on those systems where it is possible.

The above assumes that the only CGO dependency is the standard library's net package.

I had the same issue with a go binary, and I got it to work after adding this to my docker file:

RUN apk add --no-cache \ libc6-compat

Go compiler from your build machine probably links your binary with libraries on different location than in Alpine. In my case it was compiled with dependencies under /lib64 but Alpine does not use that folder.

FROM alpine:edge AS build
RUN apk update
RUN apk upgrade
RUN apk add --update go=1.8.3-r0 gcc=6.3.0-r4 g++=6.3.0-r4
WORKDIR /app
ENV GOPATH /app
ADD src /app/src
RUN go get server # server is name of our application
RUN CGO_ENABLED=1 GOOS=linux go install -a server

FROM alpine:edge
WORKDIR /app
RUN cd /app
COPY --from=build /app/bin/server /app/bin/server
CMD ["bin/server"]

I'm working on article about this issue. You can find draft with this solution here http://kefblog.com/2017-07-04/Golang-ang-docker .