# Filebeat 6.x could not support running under OS alpine

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-6-x-could-not-support-running-under-os-alpine/116195>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Tags:** filebeat\
**Created:** [January 19, 2018, 9:18am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-6-x-could-not-support-running-under-os-alpine/116195 "2018-01-19T09:18:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 11

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![steffens](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/steffens/32/79630_2.png) [@steffens](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/steffens)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2018, 2:44pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-6-x-could-not-support-running-under-os-alpine/116195/11 "2018-01-24T14:44:00Z")

</div>

Looks like the correct libc version is missing.

File output:

```auto
bash-4.3# file /usr/bin/filebeat
/usr/bin/filebeat: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.18, BuildID[sha1]=c0f19e6605040a74953d9e08abf380b345b2be53, with debug_info, not stripped

```

for comparison:

```auto
bash-4.3# file /usr/bin/file
/usr/bin/file: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-musl-x86_64.so.1, stripped

```

Checking for lib dependencies with ldd:

```auto
bash-4.3# ldd /usr/bin/filebeat
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x7f947c01c000)
	libpthread.so.0 => /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x7f947c01c000)
	libdl.so.2 => /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x7f947c01c000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x7f947c01c000)
bash-4.3# ls /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
ls: /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2: No such file or directory

```

Installing missing dependencies:

```auto
bash-4.3# apk add libc6-compat
(1/1) Installing libc6-compat (1.1.16-r14)
OK: 281 MiB in 36 packages
bash-4.3# ls /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64*
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
bash-4.3# /usr/bin/filebeat -h
Usage:
  filebeat [flags]
  filebeat [command]

Available Commands:
  export Export current config or index template
  help Help about any command
  modules Manage configured modules
  run Run filebeat
  setup Setup index template, dashboards and ML jobs
  test Test config
  version Show current version info

Flags:
  -E, --E setting=value Configuration overwrite
  -M, --M setting=value Module configuration overwrite
  -N, --N Disable actual publishing for testing
  -c, --c string Configuration file, relative to path.config (default "filebeat.yml")
      --cpuprofile string Write cpu profile to file
  -d, --d string Enable certain debug selectors
  -e, --e Log to stderr and disable syslog/file output
  -h, --help help for filebeat
      --httpprof string Start pprof http server
      --memprofile string Write memory profile to this file
      --modules string List of enabled modules (comma separated)
      --once Run filebeat only once until all harvesters reach EOF
      --path.config string Configuration path
      --path.data string Data path
      --path.home string Home path
      --path.logs string Logs path
      --plugin pluginList Load additional plugins
      --setup Load the sample Kibana dashboards
      --strict.perms Strict permission checking on config files (default true)
  -v, --v Log at INFO level

Use "filebeat [command] --help" for more information about a command.

```

As I already mentioned, beats 6.x are build with cgo enabled by default. This way beats will be dynamically linked against gnu libc. But Alpine uses [musl libc](https://www.musl-libc.org/). The `libc6-compat` package provides a libc6 compatibility layer, based on musl. That is, I have no idea how stable beats with libc6-compat will run.

Beats 5.x did not use CGO -\> statically compiled -\> no libc required. That's why build a 5.x image did work well for you.

Compiling filebeat with an alpine image, or compile/link with cgo disabled, might give you some better results.

As you care about images sizes, when compilining filebeat with cgo disabled, you won't need alpine or any other linux distribution as base image. A scratch image with filebeat only will do. There are a many tutorials how to do this. From skimming the contents, [this blog post](https://blog.codeship.com/building-minimal-docker-containers-for-go-applications/) seems fine. Uses a golang based container for building + builds a final 'scratch' image just containing the binary.

---

_[View the full topic](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-6-x-could-not-support-running-under-os-alpine/116195)._