Root Permissions for home Directory in nextflow docker Image

[YashPimple]

Hi Team Nextflow, I’m looking into the nextflow/nextflow Docker image(docker.io/nextflow/nextflow:24.10.0) and noticed that the Nextflow home directory has root ownership.

yash:~/chainguard/images-private$ docker run -it --rm docker.io/nextflow/nextflow:24.10.0 bash
bash-5.2# ls -la
total 60
drwxr-xr-x  19 root root 4096 Jan 17 12:12 .
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root    0 Jan 17 12:12 .dockerenv
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root 4096 Oct 27 20:23 .nextflow
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    7 Jan 30  2023 bin -> usr/bin
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Jan 30  2023 boot
drwxr-xr-x   5 root root  360 Jan 17 12:12 dev
drwxr-xr-x  43 root root 4096 Jan 17 12:12 etc
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Jan 30  2023 home
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    7 Jan 30  2023 lib -> usr/lib
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    9 Jan 30  2023 lib64 -> usr/lib64
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Oct 10 21:19 local
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Jan 30  2023 media
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Jan 30  2023 mnt
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Jan 30  2023 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 635 root root    0 Jan 17 12:12 proc
dr-xr-x---   3 root root 4096 Oct 27 20:22 root
drwxr-xr-x   5 root root 4096 Oct 10 21:19 run
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    8 Jan 30  2023 sbin -> usr/sbin
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Jan 30  2023 srv
dr-xr-xr-x  13 root root    0 Jan 17 11:13 sys
drwxrwxrwt   3 root root 4096 Oct 27 20:23 tmp
drwxr-xr-x  12 root root 4096 Oct 10 21:19 usr
drwxr-xr-x  18 root root 4096 Oct 10 21:19 var

While I understand running containers as non-root is best practice for security reasons, I’m curious why the home directory tend to use root permissions in the official image. Also I have notice that if the home directory tend to have non-root permissions then if any nextflow pipelines fails it doesn’t create an .nextflow.log file. Could someone provide some insight into the reasoning behind this choice?