Editor’s Note: This blog post comes from Neale Ferguson of Open Mainframe Project member organization Sine Nomine Associates. He shared with the technical community that ClefOS, which is a Linux distribution for System z intended to fill the need for a royalty and license free operating system for appliance and utility system construction by anyone wishing to deploy applications on System z hardware, now has an official Docker image. In this post he describes what this means for ClefOS and how you can learn more.
ClefOS is now an Official Docker Image. But what does it mean to be an official image? According to the Docker organization:
“The Docker Official Repositories are a curated set of Docker repositories hosted on Docker Hub. They are designed to:
- Provide essential base OS repositories (for example, ubuntu, centos) that serve as the starting point for the majority of users.
- Provide drop-in solutions for popular programming language runtimes, data stores, and other services, similar to what a Platform-as-a-Service (PAAS) would offer.
- Exemplify Dockerfile best practices and provide clear documentation to serve as a reference for other Dockerfile authors.
- Ensure that security updates are applied in a timely manner. This is particularly important as many Official Repositories are some of the most popular on Docker Hub.
“New Docker users are encouraged to use the Official Repositories in their projects. These repositories have clear documentation, promote best practices, and are designed for the most common use cases.”
In addition, the images held in the official repository are scanned using Docker Cloud’s Security Scanning Service, the results of which, provide valuable vulnerability information.
So what this means is, if you are planning a project that involves the use or creation of Docker images then those that are based on an official image offer a high degree of confidence that the image you are using is what it says it is and contains no malware, backdoors, or trojans. In addition, it ensures that these images are regularly updated and well maintained.
The official ClefOS image can be found at https://hub.docker.com/_/clefos/
