How to add users to Docker container?

The trick is to use useradd instead of its interactive wrapper adduser. I usually create users with:

RUN useradd -ms /bin/bash newuser

which creates a home directory for the user and ensures that bash is the default shell.

You can then add:

USER newuser
WORKDIR /home/newuser

to your dockerfile. Every command afterwards as well as interactive sessions will be executed as user newuser:

docker run -t -i image
newuser@131b7ad86360:~$

You might have to give newuser the permissions to execute the programs you intend to run before invoking the user command.

Using non-privileged users inside containers is a good idea for security reasons. It also has a few drawbacks. Most importantly, people deriving images from your image will have to switch back to root before they can execute commands with superuser privileges.

Adding user in docker and running your app under that user is very good practice for security point of view. To do that I would recommend below steps:

FROM node:10-alpine

# Copy source to container
RUN mkdir -p /usr/app/src

# Copy source code
COPY src /usr/app/src
COPY package.json /usr/app
COPY package-lock.json /usr/app

WORKDIR /usr/app

# Running npm install for production purpose will not run dev dependencies.
RUN npm install -only=production    

# Create a user group 'xyzgroup'
RUN addgroup -S xyzgroup

# Create a user 'appuser' under 'xyzgroup'
RUN adduser -S -D -h /usr/app/src appuser xyzgroup

# Chown all the files to the app user.
RUN chown -R appuser:xyzgroup /usr/app

# Switch to 'appuser'
USER appuser

# Open the mapped port
EXPOSE 3000

# Start the process
CMD ["npm", "start"]

Above steps is a full example of the copying NodeJS project files, creating a user group and user, assigning permissions to the user for the project folder, switching to the newly created user and running the app under that user.

Ubuntu

Try the following lines in Dockerfile:

RUN useradd -rm -d /home/ubuntu -s /bin/bash -g root -G sudo -u 1001 ubuntu
USER ubuntu
WORKDIR /home/ubuntu

useradd options (see: man useradd):

• -r, --system Create a system account. ^{see: Implications creating system accounts}
• -m, --create-home Create the user's home directory.
• -d, --home-dir HOME_DIR Home directory of the new account.
• -s, --shell SHELL Login shell of the new account.
• -g, --gid GROUP Name or ID of the primary group.
• -G, --groups GROUPS List of supplementary groups.
• -u, --uid UID Specify user ID. ^{see: Understanding how uid and gid work in Docker containers}
• -p, --password PASSWORD Encrypted password of the new account (e.g. ubuntu).

Setting default user's password

To set the user password, add -p "$(openssl passwd -1 ubuntu)" to useradd command.

Alternatively add the following lines to your Dockerfile:

SHELL ["/bin/bash", "-o", "pipefail", "-c"]
RUN echo 'ubuntu:ubuntu' | chpasswd

The first shell instruction is to make sure that -o pipefail option is enabled before RUN with a pipe in it. Read more: Hadolint: Linting your Dockerfile.

To avoid the interactive questions by adduser, you can call it with these parameters:

RUN adduser --disabled-password --gecos '' newuser

The --gecos parameter is used to set the additional information. In this case it is just empty.

On systems with busybox (like Alpine), use

RUN adduser -D -g '' newuser

See busybox adduser