Install localectl in Debian based docker container

Question

The command line utility localectl is present on Debian based systems. However, it is not present in the dockerized version of the distro

$ localectl
bash: loaclectl: command not found

Steps to reproduce:

1. Install docker and docker-compose on your system
2. docker pull debian
3. docker run -it debian bash
4. localectl

I wanted to know if there was a way to install it inside the docker container of debian or ubuntu image.

Answer 1

You'll regularly find that some packages aren't a part of the base Docker images - this is because the maintainers only put in what is absolutely necessary so that they run as small as possible.

I discovered that localectl is a part of the systemd package - which makes sense, as systemd and initd aren't really necessary in Docker - which is meant to only run a single process. While the documentation I linked goes to Ubuntu, the following will install the binaries needed:

apt-get update && apt-get install -y systemd