How to extend an existing docker image? - elasticsearch

Question

I'm using the official elasticsearch Docker image instead of setting up my own elastic search instance. And that works great, up to the point when I wanted to extend it. I wanted to install marvel into that ElasticSearch instance to get more information.
Now dockerfile/elasticsearch automatically runs ElasticSearch and setting the command to /bin/bash doesn't work, neither does attaching to the container or trying to access it over SSH, nor installing ssh-daemon with apt-get install -y openssh-server.
In this particular case, I could just go into the container's file system and execute opt/elasticsearch/bint/plugin -i elasticsearch/marvel/latest and everything worked.
But how could I install an additional service which needs to be installed with apt-get when I can't have a terminal inside the running container?

Answer 1

Simply extend it using a Dockerfile that start with
FROM dockerfile/elasticsearch
and install marvel or ssh-server or whatever you need. Then, end with the correct command to start your services. You can use supervisor to start multple services, see Run a service automatically in a docker container for more info on that.

Answer 2

If you don't mind using docker-compose, what I usually do is to add a first section for the base image you plan to reuse, and then use that image as the base in the rest of the services' Dockerfiles, something along the lines of:
---
version: '2'
services:
base:
build: ./images/base
collector:
build: ./images/collector
Then, in images/collector/Dockerfile, and since my project is called webtrack, I'd type
FROM webtrack_base
...
And now it's done!

Answer 3

Update August 2016
Having found very little current information on how to do this with latest versions of ElasticSearch (2.3.5 for example), Kibana (4.5.3) and Marvel & Sense plugins, I opted to take the steeper path and write my own image.
Please find the source code (Dockerfile) and README here
FROM java:jre-alpine
MAINTAINER arcseldon <arcseldon#gmail.com>
ENV ES_VERSION=2.3.5 \
KIBANA_VERSION=4.5.3
RUN apk add --quiet --no-progress --no-cache nodejs \
&& adduser -D elasticsearch
USER elasticsearch
WORKDIR /home/elasticsearch
RUN wget -q -O - http://download.elastic.co/elasticsearch/release/org/elasticsearch/distribution/tar/elasticsearch/${ES_VERSION}/elasticsearch-${ES_VERSION}.tar.gz \
| tar -zx \
&& mv elasticsearch-${ES_VERSION} elasticsearch \
&& wget -q -O - http://download.elastic.co/kibana/kibana/kibana-${KIBANA_VERSION}-linux-x64.tar.gz \
| tar -zx \
&& mv kibana-${KIBANA_VERSION}-linux-x64 kibana \
&& rm -f kibana/node/bin/node kibana/node/bin/npm \
&& ln -s $(which node) kibana/node/bin/node \
&& ln -s $(which npm) kibana/node/bin/npm \
&& ./elasticsearch/bin/plugin install license \
&& ./elasticsearch/bin/plugin install marvel-agent \
&& ./kibana/bin/kibana plugin --install elasticsearch/marvel/latest \
&& ./kibana/bin/kibana plugin --install elastic/sense
CMD elasticsearch/bin/elasticsearch --es.logger.level=OFF --network.host=0.0.0.0 & kibana/bin/kibana -Q
EXPOSE 9200 5601
If you just want the pre-built image then please do:
docker pull arcseldon/elasticsearch-kibana-marvel-sense
You can visit the repository on hub.docker.com here
Usage:
docker run -d -p 9200:9200 -p 5601:5601 arcseldon/elasticsearch-kibana-marvel-sense
You can connect to Elasticsearch with http://localhost:9200 and its Kibana front-end with http://localhost:5601.
You can connect to Marvel with http://localhost:5601/app/marvel and Sense with http://localhost:5601/app/sense
Hope this helps others and saves some time!