Why does mysql server not start in docker container?

I have this fairly simple docker container installing a mysql server and attempting to start it, but it refuse to start. Why? What am i doing wrong here?

FROM ubuntu:22.04
ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive 
RUN apt-get update -y
RUN apt-get -y full-upgrade;
RUN apt-get -y install apt-utils
RUN apt-get -y install default-mysql-server
RUN service mysql start
RUN service mysql status

building with
docker build . --progress=plain
ends with

#9 [6/7] RUN service mysql start
#9 0.662  * Starting MySQL database server mysqld
#9 0.725 su: warning: cannot change directory to /nonexistent: No such file or directory
#9 2.965    ...done.
#9 DONE 3.1s

#10 [7/7] RUN service mysql status
#10 0.832  * MySQL is stopped.
#10 ERROR: process "/bin/sh -c service mysql status" did not complete successfully: exit code: 3
------
 > [7/7] RUN service mysql status:
#10 0.832  * MySQL is stopped.
------
Dockerfile:8
--------------------
   6 |     RUN apt-get -y install default-mysql-server
   7 |     RUN service mysql start
   8 | >>> RUN service mysql status
--------------------
ERROR: failed to solve: process "/bin/sh -c service mysql status" did not complete successfully: exit code: 3

edit: have also tried

FROM ubuntu:20.04

and

FROM ubuntu:18.04

and

RUN apt-get -y install mariadb-server
RUN service mariadb start
RUN service mariadb status

same crash in all attempts

Commands like service broadly just don't work in Docker. You should avoid running service or systemctl or init scripts inside a container.

Your first complication here is that a Docker image doesn't persist running processes at all. When you RUN service mysql start, as part of the cleanup for that RUN step, any running processes are stopped. If you do anything to start a background process or daemon in a Dockerfile, it will not be running when the next step happens.

A Docker container runs only a single foreground process and when that process exits the container will exit too. What you should do in this case is set the image's CMD to run the database service in the foreground; for example

# instead of `RUN service ...`
CMD ["mysqld_safe"]

Also consider using the prebuilt mysql image over building your own.

(There are two other common problems with service. You see occasional questions where people try to set CMD service x start, but since the service command returns immediately the container will exit as well. On some setups these commands depend on a running systemd, but this isn't normally running in a container, and as a heavyweight combined system-setup tool and init it doesn't quite fit in a container environment.)