#how to install gifgrep in docker

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

rustic island
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i can download skill but my docker image do not have bin inside

old yarrowBOT
#

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rustic island
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any ideas?

twilit saffronBOT
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Yep — installing the gifgrep skill just adds the skill metadata/docs. It does not ship the gifgrep binary. The skill explicitly declares requires: { bins: ["gifgrep"] }, so you still need gifgrep available on PATH in whatever environment is executing tools.

Most common “Docker has no bin” causes + fixes:

1) You’re using a distroless/scratch image (no /bin/sh)

If your base image is distroless, there’s literally no /bin (and no shell), so any install/setup steps will fail.

Fix: use a normal base (Debian/Ubuntu/Alpine) for the environment where you want to run gifgrep.

2) You installed the skill in the gateway container, but tools run in the sandbox container

If you have OpenClaw sandboxing enabled, tool execution happens inside the sandbox image — so gifgrep must be installed in the sandbox image, not just the gateway container.

Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/sandboxing (note: default sandbox has no network by default, so downloads/install fail unless you enable egress)

3) Installing gifgrep in Docker (easy path = Go)

A minimal pattern is:

# 
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends golang-go ca-certificates git \
  && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

ENV GOPATH=/home/node/go
ENV PATH=/home/node/go/bin:$PATH

RUN go install github.com/steipete/gifgrep/cmd/gifgrep@latest

Then gifgrep --version should work inside the container.

If you paste:

  1. your Docker base image (FROM ...) and
  2. whether you’re running full gateway in Docker or using Docker sandboxing,
#

I can tell you exactly where to install gifgrep (gateway image vs sandbox image) and the cleanest way to do it.

rustic island
#

i am using the default docker compose file provided by openclaw with the setup script

twilit saffronBOT
#

With the default docker-setup.sh + docker-compose.yml, downloading the gifgrep skill won’t install the gifgrep binary for you — the skill just declares “I need a gifgrep executable on PATH”.

So in the Docker Compose setup you need to bake gifgrep into the OpenClaw image (recommended), because the container filesystem is otherwise “whatever was built into openclaw:local”.

Recommended: build a tiny derived image that includes gifgrep

From the OpenClaw repo root (same folder as docker-setup.sh), create Dockerfile.gifgrep:

FROM openclaw:local

USER root
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends golang-go git ca-certificates \
&& rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

ENV GOBIN=/usr/local/bin
RUN go install github.com/steipete/gifgrep/cmd/gifgrep@latest
# 

USER node

Build it:

docker build -t openclaw:gifgrep -f Dockerfile.gifgrep .

Then set your compose to use it (in the .env that docker-setup.sh generated):

OPENCLAW_IMAGE=openclaw:gifgrep
#

Restart:

docker compose up -d --force-recreate openclaw-gateway

Sanity check:

docker compose exec openclaw-gateway gifgrep --help

Docs that cover the “Docker image is security-first / add deps at build time” bit: https://docs.openclaw.ai/install/docker

If you also enabled agent sandboxing, that’s a separate container/image story (and the default compose file doesn’t mount a Docker socket), but for the default setup above: installing into the gateway image is the right move.

rustic island
#

can i install ti run time like docker compose -f ./openclaw/docker-compose.yml run --rm --entrypoint node openclaw-cli /app/node_modules/playwright-core/cli.js install chromium

twilit saffronBOT
#

You can run the Playwright installer at runtime like that, but there are two gotchas:

  1. It won’t affect the running openclaw-gateway container
    docker compose run --rm openclaw-cli ... starts a new one-off container. Anything it downloads into that container’s filesystem disappears when it exits, and the gateway container won’t see it unless you install into a shared volume path.

  2. Persistence depends on what you mounted
    By default the compose file only mounts:

  • /home/node/.openclaw (config)
  • /home/node/.openclaw/workspace (workspace)

So Playwright’s default browser download location (under ~/.cache/...) is not persisted unless you also persist /home/node.

If you want runtime install + persistence (recommended)

Set a home volume (so both openclaw-cli and openclaw-gateway share /home/node), then run the install:

# 
export OPENCLAW_HOME_VOLUME=openclaw_home
./docker-setup.sh # regenerates docker-compose.extra.yml with the /home/node volume

Then:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.extra.yml \
run --rm openclaw-cli \
node /app/node_modules/playwright-core/cli.js install chromium

(Your --entrypoint node ... version is fine too; I just prefer the simpler form.)

Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/install/docker (and FAQ section on Docker limitations)