How to debug non-working images?

[rcfa]

So I'm trying to get my feet wet with Apple Container. I tried to install Kali into a container machine, but this ends like that:

$ container system start                                                                                                                                                      1 ⨯
Launching container-apiserver...
Testing access to container-apiserver...
Verifying machine API server is running...

$ container machine create kalilinux/kali-rolling --name kali-mac --arch arm64
Error: failed to create process in container (cause: "internalError: "failed to create process cbcfc14c-e862-41bf-82e8-c2c8196f907b in container kali-mac-b8e39a (cause: "invalidState: "cannot exec: container is not running"")"")

Not exactly sure what to do with an error message like that and where to go from here...

[saehejkang]

You might want to look into if the kalilinux/kali-rolling image is even compatible with container machine. Based on the docs, the image must include /sbin/init as the usable init system, and I don't think the image is compatiable.

Something like below worked for me

FROM kalilinux/kali-rolling

ENV container=container

RUN apt-get update && \
    DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install -y \
        systemd \
        systemd-sysv \
        dbus \
        sudo \
        ca-certificates \
        curl \
        wget \
        vim-tiny \
        iproute2 \
        iputils-ping \
        openssh-server && \
    apt-get clean && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

RUN : > /etc/machine-id && \
    : > /var/lib/dbus/machine-id && \
    systemctl set-default multi-user.target

# Build the local image
container build -t local/kali-machine:latest .

# Create the machine based on the local image
container machine create \
  local/kali-machine:latest \
  --name kali-mac \
  --arch arm64

# Run the machine
container machine run -n kali-mac

[rcfa]

OK, thanks, that got me going...

...in docker-compose.yml:

FROM kalilinux/kali-rolling

ENV container=container

RUN apt-get update && \
    DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install -y --install-recommends kali-system-core && \
    apt-get clean && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

RUN : > /etc/machine-id && \
    : > /var/lib/dbus/machine-id && \
    systemctl set-default multi-user.target

...this is what I ended up using.
Then of course:

$ container build -t local/kali-rolling:latest -f docker-compose.yml
$ container machine create local/kali-rolling:latest --name kali --arch arm64 --virtualization
$ container machine run -n kali

What's the trick to set the home directory automatically to /Users/username instead of /home/username ?
I mean, I can manually edit it, but I was under the impression that this is normally automatic.

[saehejkang]

I am not 100% sure on the trick to set the home directory automatically to /Users/username instead of /home/username.