"panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference" on FreeBSD

[Jomy10]

I'm getting an error while using podman that originates from Buildah on FreeBSD.

Reproducing the error

With the following Dockerfile:

FROM alpine

COPY "../../." "/website"
WORKDIR "/website"

RUN apk update
RUN apk upgrade

When I run podman build -f Dockerfile -t website --os=linux --progress=plain

The output is the following:

STEP 1/6: FROM alpine
STEP 2/6: COPY "../../." "/website"
--> Using cache e2a2cabaf05c671b5a35d89ec24124dd4522aedbc7918c9de8758e727eaf6dc7
--> e2a2cabaf05c
STEP 3/6: WORKDIR "/website"
--> Using cache 18a81ebc2ddc93ebc909e4741e5d3a262db34cf21767c84826697996892ef7f7
--> 18a81ebc2ddc
STEP 4/6: RUN apk update
error running container: did not get container start message from parent: EOF
panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference
[signal SIGSEGV: segmentation violation code=0x1 addr=0x50 pc=0x221f085]

goroutine 13 [running]:
github.com/containers/buildah.(*Builder).runUsingRuntimeSubproc(_, _, {0x874473400, {0x0, 0x0}, 0x0, {0x8744c2c80, 0x7}, {0x2914180, 0x0, ...}, ...}, ...)
	/wrkdirs/usr/ports/sysutils/podman/work/podman-5.1.1/vendor/github.com/containers/buildah/run_common.go:1256 +0x12e5
github.com/containers/buildah.(*Builder).Run(_, {_, _, _}, {0x874473400, {0x0, 0x0}, 0x0, {0x8744c2c80, 0x7}, ...})
	/wrkdirs/usr/ports/sysutils/podman/work/podman-5.1.1/vendor/github.com/containers/buildah/run_freebsd.go:325 +0x20b1
github.com/containers/buildah/imagebuildah.(*StageExecutor).Run(_, {0x1, {0x8742fc610, 0x1, 0x1}, {0x0, 0x0, 0x0}, {0x0, 0x0}, ...}, ...)
	/wrkdirs/usr/ports/sysutils/podman/work/podman-5.1.1/vendor/github.com/containers/buildah/imagebuildah/stage_executor.go:815 +0x1050
github.com/openshift/imagebuilder.(*Builder).Run(0x874004900, 0x874620f00, {0x90cd98, 0x8744eb860}, 0x0)
	/wrkdirs/usr/ports/sysutils/podman/work/podman-5.1.1/vendor/github.com/openshift/imagebuilder/builder.go:481 +0x527
github.com/containers/buildah/imagebuildah.(*StageExecutor).Execute(0x8744eb860, {0x907758, 0x874394cf0}, {0x8742723b0, 0x6})
	/wrkdirs/usr/ports/sysutils/podman/work/podman-5.1.1/vendor/github.com/containers/buildah/imagebuildah/stage_executor.go:1495 +0x33d5
github.com/containers/buildah/imagebuildah.(*Executor).buildStage(0x874194680, {0x907758, 0x874394cf0}, 0x1?, {0x874481fb0, 0x1, 0x1}, 0x0)
	/wrkdirs/usr/ports/sysutils/podman/work/podman-5.1.1/vendor/github.com/containers/buildah/imagebuildah/executor.go:570 +0x5c5
github.com/containers/buildah/imagebuildah.(*Executor).Build.func3.1()
	/wrkdirs/usr/ports/sysutils/podman/work/podman-5.1.1/vendor/github.com/containers/buildah/imagebuildah/executor.go:934 +0x2b1
created by github.com/containers/buildah/imagebuildah.(*Executor).Build.func3 in goroutine 11
	/wrkdirs/usr/ports/sysutils/podman/work/podman-5.1.1/vendor/github.com/containers/buildah/imagebuildah/executor.go:905 +0x305

https://github.com/containers/buildah/blob/6ceba8838d331eb26378cb37d9fc8ba98939aa92/imagebuildah/executor.go#L934

When I remove the RUN statements from the image, it builds and runs fine.

System information

Podman and buildah are the latest versions available on pkg

# podman --version
podman version 5.1.1

# buildah --version
buildah version 1.36.0 (image-spec 1.1.0, runtime-spec 1.2.0)

```                        `       [email protected]
  ` `.....---.......--.```   -/    -------------
  +o   .--`         /y:`      +.   OS: FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE amd64
   yo`:.            :o      `+-    Uptime: 2 days, 14 hours, 2 mins
    y/               -/`   -o/     Packages: 122 (pkg)
   .-                  ::/sy+:.    Shell: zsh 5.9
   /                     `--  /    Terminal: /dev/pts/0
  `:                          :`   CPU: Intel Xeon (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX) (2) @ 2.294
  `:                          :`   GPU: Virtio 1.0 GPU
   /                          /    Memory: 2057MiB / 3957MiB
   .-                        -.
    --                      -.
     `:`                  `:`
       .--             `--.
          .---.....----.

[nalind]

It looks like this was fixed by https://github.com/containers/buildah/pull/5580, which landed in 1.37.0, though it might also require https://github.com/containers/buildah/pull/5594. Do you still encounter this problem with 1.37.0?

[Luap99]

cc @dfr

[github-actions[bot]]

A friendly reminder that this issue had no activity for 30 days.

[Jomy10]

I will try again when I have time to confirm this has been fixed.

[dfr]

The fix for this is incorporated into the FreeBSD packages for Buildah and Podman - I just tested with buildah-1.36.0_4 and podman-5.1.1_5 and did not encounter the nil pointer dereference. I plan to update the FreeBSD ports for Buildah and Podman to track the latest releases.