Error: /etc/*release "no such file or directory"

Error

Run actions/checkout@v2
/usr/bin/docker exec  432276a4e63948fd1ce317e06c553d8b59da3899e0254e9381f32d34cf40b653 sh -c "cat /etc/*release | grep ^ID"
OCI runtime exec failed: exec failed: container_linux.go:349: starting container process caused "no such file or directory": unknown

Description

checkout is not able to find the /etc/*release file for some reason. A previous issue asserted it had to do with being alpine but i have tested the alpine/git container that worked in the exact same context:

$ docker run -it --rm drewmullen/lambda-build-python:0.1 -c 'cat /etc/*release | grep ^ID'
ID=alpine

$ docker run -it --rm drewmullen/lambda-build-python:0.1 -c '/bin/ls -l /etc/os-release'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10 Jan  1  1970 /etc/os-release

one thing to note is that this container was built by a nix expression so its quite bare. perhaps there are some other requirements that yall could point to that i could be missing?

Example failure: https://github.com/drewmullen/actions-playground/runs/998812222?check_suite_focus=true
Example workflow:

name: test checkout on diff versions
on:
  issue_comment:
    types: [created]
jobs:
  build:
    if: >
      startsWith(github.event.comment.body, 'build')
      && startsWith(github.event.issue.pull_request.url, 'https://')
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container:
      image: drewmullen/lambda-build-python:0.1
    steps:
      - name: 'Code Checkout'
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

Start with the actions/checkout@v2 container execution path and reproduce the provided workflow using the drewmullen/lambda-build-python:0.1 image. Compare it with the alpine/git behavior and inspect the reported /etc/*release lookup; done means identifying the missing requirement and establishing supported behavior or a clear requirement for custom containers.