hetzner-download-image.sh

Download a container image as a plain rootfs tarball for Hetzner installimage.

Pure shell (curl + jq). Fetches from OCI/Docker registries and outputs a single .tar[.gz] with top-level bin, etc, usr, root — the format Hetzner installimage expects. No Docker daemon required.

Install

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mystack-cloud/hetzner-download-image.sh/main/get.hetzner-download-image.sh | sh -s

Or with wget:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mystack-cloud/hetzner-download-image.sh/main/get.hetzner-download-image.sh | sh -s

This installs hetzner-download-image.sh into ~/.local/bin and adds it to PATH. To skip modifying your shell config:

SKIP_PATH=1 curl https://get.hetzner-download-image.sh | sh -s

Override install directory:

INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/bin curl https://get.hetzner-download-image.sh | sh -s

Install from a specific URL (e.g. GitHub raw):

SCRIPT_URL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OWNER/REPO/main/hetzner-download-image.sh curl https://get.hetzner-download-image.sh | sh -s

Requirements

• curl – HTTP
• jq – JSON
• tar – archives
• gzip – optional (for .tar.gz output)

Usage

hetzner-download-image.sh [OPTIONS] IMAGE [OUTPUT_DIR]

# Examples
hetzner-download-image.sh ghcr.io/myorg/hetzner-images/debian-13:latest
hetzner-download-image.sh -o /root/local_images -u user:token ghcr.io/myorg/debian-13:latest
hetzner-download-image.sh --no-gzip -o ./images docker.io/library/alpine:3.19

Option	Description
-o DIR	Output directory (default: current dir). Filename is always <name>-<arch>-<tag>.tar[.gz] where <name> is the last path component of the image repo (e.g. debian-13-amd64-latest.tar.gz).
--no-gzip	Write uncompressed .tar
-u USER[:PASSWORD]	Registry credentials (required for private images)
-q	Quiet
-h, --help	Show help

The script writes a single rootfs tarball into the output directory. The file name is derived from the image (last repo path component), host architecture, and tag (e.g. debian-13-amd64-latest.tar.gz by default, or debian-13-amd64-latest.tar with --no-gzip). Point installimage’s config at this file (e.g. in config.cfg).

Image reference

• [REGISTRY/]REPOSITORY[:TAG|@sha256:DIGEST]
• Default registry: Docker Hub (registry-1.docker.io)
• Default tag: latest
• For GitHub Container Registry use -u USER:ghp_TOKEN or GITHUB_TOKEN.

Architecture

For multi-arch images (manifest lists), the script picks the manifest matching the host architecture (uname -m → OCI: amd64, arm64, arm, 386, ppc64le, s390x, riscv64). If no match is found, the first manifest in the list is used.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.