How do you run an Openshift Docker container as something besides root?

Although you don't have access to root, your OpenShift container, by default, is a member of the root group. You can change some dir/file permissions to avoid the Permission Denied errors.

If you're using a Dockerfile to deploy an image to OpenShift, you can add the following RUN command to your Dockerfile:

RUN chgrp -R 0 /run && chmod -R g=u /run

This will change the group for everything in the /run directory to the root group and then set the group permission on all files to be equivalent to the owner (group equals user) of the file. Essentially, any user in the root group has the same permissions as the owner for every file.

Openshift has strictly security policy regarding custom Docker builds.

Have a look a this OpenShift Application Platform

In particular at point 4 into the FAQ section, here quoted.

4. Why doesn't my Docker image run on OpenShift?

Security! Origin runs with the following security policy by default:

Containers run as a non-root unique user that is separate from other system users They cannot access host resources, run privileged, or become root They are given CPU and memory limits defined by the system administrator Any persistent storage they access will be under a unique SELinux label, which prevents others from seeing their content These settings are per project, so containers in different projects cannot see each other by default Regular users can run Docker, source, and custom builds By default, Docker builds can (and often do) run as root. You can control who can create Docker builds through the builds/docker and builds/custom policy resource. Regular users and project admins cannot change their security quotas.

Many Docker containers expect to run as root (and therefore edit all the contents of the filesystem). The Image Author's guide gives recommendations on making your image more secure by default:

Don't run as root

Make directories you want to write to group-writable and owned by group id 0 Set the net-bind capability on your executables if they need to bind to ports <1024

Otherwise, you can see the security documentation for descriptions on how to relax these restrictions.

I hope it helps.