bitnami/ruby repository overview

⁠Bitnami Secure Image for Ruby

Overview of Ruby⁠ Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

⁠ TL;DR

docker run --name ruby REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/ruby:latest

⁠ Choosing between the Standard and Minimal image

This asset is available in two flavors: Standard and Minimal; designed to address different use cases and operational needs.

⁠ Standard images

The standard images are full-featured, production-ready containers built on top of secure base operating systems. They include:

• The complete runtime and commonly used system tools.
• A familiar Linux environment (shell, package manager, debugging utilities).
• Full compatibility with most CI/CD pipelines and existing workloads.

Recommended for:

• Development and testing environments.
• Workloads requiring package installation or debugging tools.
• Applications that depend on system utilities or shared libraries.

⁠ Minimal images

The minimal images are optimized, distroless-style containers derived from a stripped-down base. They only ship what’s strictly necessary to run the application; no shell, package manager, or extra libraries. They provide:

• Smaller size: Faster pull and startup times.
• Reduced attack surface: Fewer components and potential vulnerabilities.
• Simpler maintenance: Fewer dependencies to patch or update.

Recommended for:

• Production environments prioritizing performance and security.
• Regulated or security-sensitive workloads
• Containers built via multi-stage builds (e.g., Golang static binaries).

⁠ Supported tags and respective Dockerfile links

Learn more about the Bitnami tagging policy and the difference between rolling tags and immutable tags in our documentation page⁠.

⁠ Deprecation Note (2022-01-21)

The prod tags has been removed; from now on just the regular container images will be released.

⁠ Deprecation Note (2020-08-18)

The formatting convention for prod tags has been changed:

• BRANCH-debian-10-prod is now tagged as BRANCH-prod-debian-10
• VERSION-debian-10-rX-prod is now tagged as VERSION-prod-debian-10-rX
• latest-prod is now deprecated

⁠ Get this image

The recommended way to get the Bitnami Ruby Docker Image is to pull the prebuilt image from the Docker Hub Registry⁠.

docker pull REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/ruby:latest

To use a specific version, you can pull a versioned tag. You can view the list of available versions⁠ in the Docker Hub Registry.

docker pull REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/ruby:[TAG]

If you wish, you can also build the image yourself by cloning the repository, changing to the directory containing the Dockerfile and executing the docker build command. Remember to replace the APP, VERSION and OPERATING-SYSTEM path placeholders in the example command below with the correct values.

git clone https://github.com/bitnami/containers.git
cd bitnami/APP/VERSION/OPERATING-SYSTEM
docker build -t REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/APP:latest .

⁠ Using docker-compose.yaml

Please be aware this file has not undergone internal testing. Consequently, we advise its use exclusively for development or testing purposes.

⁠ Entering the REPL

By default, running this image will drop you into the Ruby REPL (irb), where you can interactively test and try things out in Ruby.

docker run -it --name ruby REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/ruby:latest

Further Reading:

• Ruby IRB Documentation⁠

⁠ Configuration

The following section describes how to run commands

⁠ Running your Ruby script

The default work directory for the Ruby image is /app. You can mount a folder from your host here that includes your Ruby script, and run it normally using the ruby command.

docker run -it --name ruby -v /path/to/app:/app REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/ruby:latest \
  ruby script.rb

⁠ Running a Ruby app with gems

If your Ruby app has a Gemfile defining your app's dependencies and start script, you can install the dependencies before running your app.

docker run -it --name ruby -v /path/to/app:/app REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/ruby:latest \
  sh -c "bundle install && ruby script.rb"

or by modifying the docker-compose.yml⁠ file present in this repository:

ruby:
  ...
  command: "sh -c 'bundle install && ruby script.rb'"
  volumes:
    - .:/app
  ...

Further Reading:

• rubygems.org⁠
• bundler.io⁠

⁠ Accessing a Ruby app running a web server

This image exposes port 3000 in the container, so you should ensure that your web server is binding to port 3000, as well as listening on 0.0.0.0 to accept remote connections from your host.

Below is an example of a Sinatra⁠ app listening to remote connections on port 3000:

require 'sinatra'

set :bind, '0.0.0.0'
set :port, 3000

get '/hi' do
  "Hello World!"
end

To access your web server from your host machine you can ask Docker to map a random port on your host to port 3000 inside the container.

docker run -it --name ruby -P REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/ruby:latest

Run docker port to determine the random port Docker assigned.

$ docker port ruby
3000/tcp -> 0.0.0.0:32769

You can also manually specify the port you want forwarded from your host to the container.

docker run -it --name ruby -p 8080:3000 REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/ruby:latest

Access your web server in the browser by navigating to http://localhost:8080.

⁠ FIPS configuration in Bitnami Secure Images

The Bitnami Ruby Docker image from the Bitnami Secure Images⁠ catalog includes extra features and settings to configure the container with FIPS capabilities. You can configure the next environment variables:

• OPENSSL_FIPS: whether OpenSSL runs in FIPS mode or not. yes (default), no.

⁠ Connecting to other containers

If you want to connect to your Ruby web server inside another container, you can use docker networking to create a network and attach all the containers to that network.

⁠ Serving your Ruby app through an nginx frontend

We may want to make our Ruby web server only accessible via an nginx web server. Doing so will allow us to setup more complex configuration, serve static assets using nginx, load balance to different Ruby instances, etc.

⁠Step 1: Create a network

docker network create app-tier --driver bridge

or using Docker Compose:

version: '2'

networks:
  app-tier:
    driver: bridge

⁠Step 2: Create a virtual host

Let's create an nginx virtual host to reverse proxy to our Ruby container.

server {
    listen 0.0.0.0:80;
    server_name yourapp.com;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header HOST $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;

        # proxy_pass http://[your_ruby_container_link_alias]:3000;
        proxy_pass http://myapp:3000;
        proxy_redirect off;
    }
}

Notice we've substituted the link alias name myapp, we will use the same name when creating the container.

Copy the virtual host above, saving the file somewhere on your host. We will mount it as a volume in our nginx container.

⁠Step 3: Run the Ruby image with a specific name

docker run -it --name myapp \
  --network app-tier \
  -v /path/to/app:/app \
  REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/ruby:latest ruby script.rb

or using Docker Compose:

version: '2'
myapp:
  image: REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/ruby:latest
  command: ruby script.rb
  networks:
    - app-tier
  volumes:
    - .:/app

⁠Step 4: Run the nginx image

docker run -it \
  -v /path/to/vhost.conf:/bitnami/nginx/conf/vhosts/yourapp.conf \
  --network app-tier \
  REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/nginx:latest

or using Docker Compose:

version: '2'
nginx:
  image: REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/nginx:latest
  networks:
    - app-tier
  volumes:
    - /path/to/vhost.conf:/bitnami/nginx/conf/vhosts/yourapp.conf

⁠ Notable Changes

⁠ 2.3.1-r0 (2016-05-11)

• Commands are now executed as the root user. Use the --user argument to switch to another user or change to the required user using sudo to launch applications. Alternatively, as of Docker 1.10 User Namespaces are supported by the docker daemon. Refer to the daemon user namespace options⁠ for more details.

⁠ 2.2.3-0-r02 (2015-09-30)

• /app directory no longer exported as a volume. This caused problems when building on top of the image, since changes in the volume were not persisted between RUN commands. To keep the previous behavior (so that you can mount the volume in another container), create the container with the -v /app option.

⁠ 2.2.3-0-r01 (2015-08-26)

• Permissions fixed so bitnami user can install gems without needing sudo.

⁠ License

Copyright © 2026 Broadcom. The term "Broadcom" refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0⁠

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.