How to use sudo inside a docker container?

Question

Normally, docker containers are run using the user root. I'd like to use a different user, which is no problem using docker's USER directive. But this user should be able to use sudo inside the container. This command is missing.

Here's a simple Dockerfile for this purpose:

FROM ubuntu:12.04  RUN useradd docker && echo "docker:docker" | chpasswd RUN mkdir -p /home/docker && chown -R docker:docker /home/docker  USER docker CMD /bin/bash 

Running this container, I get logged in with user 'docker'. When I try to use sudo, the command isn't found. So I tried to install the sudo package inside my Dockerfile using

RUN apt-get install sudo 

This results in Unable to locate package sudo

Answer 1

Just got it. As regan pointed out, I had to add the user to the sudoers group. But the main reason was I'd forgotten to update the repositories cache, so apt-get couldn't find the sudo package. It's working now. Here's the completed code:

FROM ubuntu:12.04  RUN apt-get update && \       apt-get -y install sudo  RUN useradd -m docker && echo "docker:docker" | chpasswd && adduser docker sudo  USER docker CMD /bin/bash