Error :“the command '/bin/sh -c source protected-env/bin/activate' returned a non-zero code: 127” while I'm trying to configure my first dockerfile

Question

I'm trying to learn docker. This is my first experiment. I have written this dockerfile :

FROM nvidia/cudagl:11.3.0-base-ubuntu20.04

LABEL Author="ZioMario"
LABEL Title="Firefox/Docker20.10.6/Ubuntu20.04"

# Enviorment variables

ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND noninteractive
ENV LC_ALL C.UTF-8
ENV LANG C.UTF-8
ENV PATH "$PATH:/bin/2.82/python/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin"
ENV FIREFOX_PATH "/bin/2.82"
ENV FIREFOXPIP "/bin/2.82/python/bin/pip3"
ENV FIREFOXPY "/bin/2.82/python/bin/python3.7m"
ENV HW="GPU"

# Install dependencies

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \ 
    apt-utils \
    wget \ 
    libopenexr-dev \ 
    bzip2 \ 
    build-essential \ 
    zlib1g-dev \ 
    libxmu-dev \ 
    libxi-dev \ 
    libxxf86vm-dev \ 
    libfontconfig1 \ 
    libxrender1 \ 
    libgl1-mesa-glx \ 
    xz-utils \
    firefox \
    openjdk-8-jre

# Download the Python source

RUN wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.7.0/Python-3.7.0.tgz \ 
    && tar -xzf Python-3.7.0.tgz \ 
    && cp -r Python-3.7.0/Include/* $FIREFOX_PATH/python/include/python3.7m/ \ 
    && rm -rf Python-3.7.0.tgz \ 
    && rm -rf Python-3.7.0 

# Installing a modern version of numpy

RUN rm -rf ${FIREFOX_PATH}/python/lib/python3.7/site-packages/numpy 

# Must first ensurepip to install Firefox pip3 and then new numpy

RUN ${FIREFOXPY} -m venv protected-env

RUN source protected-env/bin/activate

RUN ${FIREFOXPY} -m ensurepip && ${FIREFOXPIP} install --upgrade pip && ${FIREFOXPIP} install numpy
RUN deactivate

# Set the working directory
WORKDIR /

Unfortunately it does not work. This is the error that I'm getting :

The command '/bin/sh -c source protected-env/bin/activate' returned a non-zero code: 127

the wrong line is this :

RUN source protected-env/bin/activate

Do you have any idea about how to fix it ? thanks.

Answer 1

RUN source protected-env/bin/activate

makes no sense.

activate is a script that sets a few environment variables for the current shell; however, the current shell dies directl after sourcing that file. So, it has no effect. Especially, it has no effect on the next line!

Your error, however, stems from the fact that you're trying to run a bash script with sh, which doesn't work. Solution here is to put all these things (sourceing the activate file, installing things using pip) into a single shell script that starts with #!/bin/bash, so that it can be executed in one go, and then COPYing it into your container image, then RUNning that.

However, I've not yet encountered a reason to install numpy via pip. You should probably not do that, but install it using apt!

Same, and even more so, applies to python itself. Don't build that from source – I don't know where your guide is from, but seriously, that's a terrible idea. Your ubuntu comes with Python3, most probably even preinstalled, or installable as apt install python3, done! In total, you'd just add python3-numpy to the end of your list of packages to install, and be done; no downloading python, no building it, and certainly no need to source some activate file and install numpy via pip!