Alpine template builds fail: glibc busybox in SyncChangesToDisk + missing /usr/bin/ionice and /usr/bin/nice

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
74/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
go, linux
Domain
build-system, infrastructure

Research direction

Start with packages/orchestrator/pkg/template/build/sandboxtools/command.go and packages/orchestrator/pkg/template/build/phases/base/distro/init.go, then inspect the OOM wrapper in handler.go. Reproduce the Alpine base-layer failures and verify that sync works with the intended PATH and that envd-spawned commands find ionice and nice. Done means Alpine template builds no longer exit with status 127 for these causes.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Summary

Alpine-based template builds fail at the base layer with two distinct exit status 127 errors.

Bug 1 — SyncChangesToDisk uses glibc-linked busybox

File: packages/orchestrator/pkg/template/build/sandboxtools/command.go

SyncChangesToDisk invokes rootfs.SandboxBusyBoxPath + " sync", which resolves to /usr/bin/busybox sync. The /usr/bin/busybox binary is compiled against glibc and cannot be executed on Alpine (musl libc) — it fails with exit status 127.

Bug 2 — /usr/bin/ionice and /usr/bin/nice missing on Alpine

File: packages/orchestrator/pkg/template/build/phases/base/distro/init.go (InitOpenRC)

envd's OOM wrapper hard-codes /usr/bin/ionice and /usr/bin/nice (handler.go):

exec /usr/bin/ionice -c 2 -n 4 /usr/bin/nice -n N ...

On Alpine, util-linux-misc installs ionice to /bin/ionice (not /usr/bin/ionice), and nice lives only at /bin/nice (busybox symlink). Verified:

$ docker run --rm alpine:3.22 sh -c 'apk add --no-cache util-linux-misc >/dev/null 2>&1; ls /usr/bin/ionice /usr/bin/nice 2>&1'
ls: /usr/bin/ionice: No such file or directory
ls: /usr/bin/nice: No such file or directory

Without symlinks at /usr/bin/ionice and /usr/bin/nice, every command envd spawns during the build step layer exits 127.

Fix

See linked PR: add /usr/bin/{ionice,nice} symlinks in the Alpine InitOpenRC provisioning step, and replace the glibc busybox path in SyncChangesToDisk with plain sync + explicit PATH.

Dominant language
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