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I'm not sure if this should go in Apps, or Linux, so I apologize in advance if this is in the wrong section!

Long story short, I'm pretty new to Docker. One of the simulators I use (GNS3) has an Ubuntu Docker container. It's missing a good amount of tools/software, in order to keep the size down.

What I'm curious about, is if there's any way to use that container as a "base", so that I can install other software on top of it (like Ansible, Chef, Saltstack, Ganglia/Nagios, etc....), and then split that out as a new container? Someone more knowledgeable about this than me posted some instructions, but there were some errors in it, so he pulled the guide down.

I was able to install Ansible and a bunch of roles into the Ubuntu container, and used gnome-term to supposedly make the Ansible container as a new device. As long as I kept it in the same topology (I removed and re-added it a bunch, and the changes were persistent.). However, once I created a new topology, and added the Ansible node, everything was gone. When I did the split (I think it was "docker commit --change 'ENTRYPOINT []' --change VOLUME '/root /etc/anisble /usr/lib/python2.7' [name] [string]"), it's still there in /var/lib/docker. It just doesn't work.

Is there any way to do what I accomplish, or would I be better off just starting from scratch? I've got several books on Docker, but they're just soooo boring. Even my ADHD medicine (Adderall) doesn't help me not get super-bored within a page or two. Any advice, or links that are at least semi-interesting? It's not a huge rush, I just want to make these because: A) I want to prove I can, and B) I've seen a LOT of requests asking for things like this. I've made Qemu server images of Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Saltstack, etc... in the past, but nobody wants to download a 1-2GB .qcow2 file. After getting Ansible set up in that Ubuntu docker container, it was only +500MB.

Thanks in advance, if anyone can help point me in the right direction.

I'm new to docker too but isn't the idea to put additional tools in a separate container then connect the two so they can interact?

If it works without changing topology, then I'm not sure that's a packaging problem. "docker commit" is the command you use to generate a new image after making changes, and I'm assuming there's a good reason for changing the entry point.

Docker does have some odd rules about DNS resolution, but usually you don't have to worry about that when working with only a single container. Have you tried connecting to the container when it's running to rule out any connectivity issues? docker exec -it <container name> /bin/bash (or whatever shell you've got) should let you poke around in there and check things out.