bigdebian kubernetes debugging

01 Dec 2023

Sometimes you need to break out the big guns when it comes to debugging. debian:12 is unfortunately missing a bunch of basic tools to keep the image size and attack surface area small. I spent a good while looking for a ready-to-go container with everything I wanted but ended up making my own as a known quantity. Im calling it “bigdebian”.

Its just normal debian:12 with some extra packages. Check out the Dockerfile.

Published image

hosted on quay.io
Builds automatically on pushes to my git repository
Know a way to rebuild when upstream debian:12 is republished? Please add a comment!
I believe its possible to build off upstream publishes on Docker Hub but not on quay.io
I like quay.io so I build there 🙂

Using the image

Docker

If your running plain docker this isnt hugely useful since you can normally run apt or whatever to get extra packages but here it is anyway:

docker run -ti quay.io/geoff1/bigdebian:master

Kubernetes

A self contained full-fat debian image that runs in kubernetes with no additional downloads needed. Quick and easy and includes a bunch of handy tools to debug networking:

curl
nc (netcat)
dig
And more!

To run in Kubernetes just create a Pod:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: bigdebian
  namespace: default
spec:
  containers:
  - name: bigdebian
    image: quay.io/geoff1/bigdebian:master
    command: [/usr/bin/sleep]
    args: [infinity]

And then of course just exec to it:

kubectl exec -ti bigdebian -- bash

Have lots of fun!

https://github.com/GeoffWilliams/docker_bigdebian
https://quay.io/repository/geoff1/bigdebian

geoffwilliams@home:~$