I've created a git repo for application (A) that contains a Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml that stands up a postgres database and creates and populates some tables. I use this as a support app for testing purposes during development as a disposable database.
I'd like to use this docker app in a Jenkins pipeline for testing my main application (B), which is a NodeJS app that reads and writes to the database. Application B is also in git and I want to use a Jenkins pipeline to run its tests (written in Mocha). So my overall pipeline logic would be something like this:
Triggering Event:
Code for application B is pushed to some branch (feature or master) to git.
Pipeline:
git checkout code for Application B (implicit)
git checkout code for Application A (explicitly)
cd to Application A directory:
docker-compose up -d // start postgres container
cd's to Application B directory:
npm install
npm run test (kicks off my Mocha tests that expect postgres db with localhost:5432 url)
cd to Application A directory
docker-compose down // destroy postgres container
// if tests pass, deploy application B
I'm trying to figure out the best way to structure this. I'm really checking out code from two repos: The one I want to test and build, and another repo that contains a "support" application for testing, essentially mocking my real database.
Would I use a script or declarative pipeline?
The pipeline operates in a workspace directory for application B that is implicitly checked out when the pipeline is triggered. Do I just checkout the code for Application A within this workspace and run docker commands on it?
I have a repository in Gitlab and what I wish to have is a setup in which when a specific file in a specific branch is changed, I want a script/job to be triggered, which will read and make operations based on this new version of the changed file.
That script can be in another machine and be accessed through SSH, or it can be inside the same repository and be executed somehow.
Is there any way to do this with Gitlab CI/CD?
Edit: I'm using GitLab Enterprise Edition 11.2.3-ee aadca99
You can use only/except changes to do this.
It has been introduced in Gitlab 11.4 and it works with files and directories within your repository, example :
docker build:
script: docker build -t my-image:$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG .
only:
changes:
- Dockerfile
- docker/scripts/*
- dockerfiles/**/*
- more_scripts/*.{rb,py,sh}
So we are currently moving away from our current deployment provider: Beanstalk, which is great but we are on the top tier and we keep running out of space or hitting our repository limits. So we are moving away so please do not suggest any other SaaS provider.
I personally use Gitlab for my own projects and a few company projects and it's amazing we use a self hosted version on our local server in our company building.
We have CI setup and currently are using the following deployment code (I have minified the bits just to the deployment for development) - this uses the shell executer for deploying as we deploy to an existing linux server.
variables:
HOSTNAME: '<hostname>'
USERNAME: '<username>'
PASSWORD: '<password>'
PATH_DEV: '/path/to/www'
# Define the stages (we can add as many as we want)
stages:
# - build
- deploy
# The code for development deployment
deploy_dev:
stage: deploy
script:
- echo "Deploying to development environment..."
- rm .gitlab-ci.yml
- rsync -urltvz --filter=':- .gitignore' --exclude=".git" -e "sshpass -p"$PASSWORD" ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null" * $USERNAME#$HOSTNAME:$PATH_DEV
- echo "Finished deploying."
environment:
name: Development
url: http://dev.domain.com
only:
- envdev
The Problem:
When we use the above code to deploy it's perfect and works really well, and it deploys all the code after optimisation etc, but we have found a little bug here.
When you delete a file then the rsync command will not delete the file, now I did some searching and found the --remove flag you can add, and it worked - but it deleted all the user uploaded content as well. Now I added the .gitignore in to the filtering, so it would ignore some the files in their (which are usually user generated) or configuration files or/and libraries (npm, etc.). This is fine until a user started uploading files using the media manager in our framework which stores in a folder that is not in the .gitignore file and it can't because it contains other files, as we also add our own files in there so they're editable by the user, so now I am unsure how to manage this.
What we are looking for is a CI setup, which will upload file changes to the server, so it would search through the latest commits, and find the latest files that have been changed and then push only them files up. Of course I would like to do this with the Gitlab CI still, so any ideas examples or tutorials would be amazing.
Thanks in advance.
~ Danny
May it helps: https://github.com/banago/PHPloy
Looks this tool designed for php project, but I think it can use other web deployment.
how it works:
PHPloy stores a file called .revision on your server. This file contains the hash of the commit that you have deployed to that server. When you run phploy, it downloads that file and compares the commit reference in it with the commit you are trying to deploy to find out which files to upload. PHPloy also stores a .revision file for each submodule in your repository.
I am implementing Continuous Integration into my Laravel workflow, and while going through the basic I came across a sample project on Gitlab where (1.) Laravel Envoys was used to write tasks related to how the app should be deployed and then (2.) bootstrapping the process using Gitlab CI.
I got a bit confused, it seems to me that the part (bellow) where you define the tasks using Enovy is easily replicable when defining jobs inside the .gitlab-ci.yml file, which makes the use of Envoy redundant:
...
#setup
$repository = 'git#gitlab.example.com:<USERNAME>/laravel-sample.git';
$releases_dir = '/var/www/app/releases';
$app_dir = '/var/www/app';
$release = date('YmdHis');
$new_release_dir = $releases_dir .'/'. $release;
#endsetup
...
#task('update_symlinks')
echo "Linking storage directory"
rm -rf {{ $new_release_dir }}/storage
ln -nfs {{ $app_dir }}/storage {{ $new_release_dir }}/storage
echo 'Linking .env file'
ln -nfs {{ $app_dir }}/.env {{ $new_release_dir }}/.env
echo 'Linking current release'
ln -nfs {{ $new_release_dir }} {{ $app_dir }}/current
#endtask
...
I would be grateful if someone could correct me if I'm wrong, or explain what benefits Envoy could bring into the Gitlab Continuous Integration workflow.
You are correct that the example shell script could be easily implemented in either a .gitlab-ci.yml file or an Envoy.blade.php file (so 'no', Envoy is not necessary for gitlab-ci deployments of Laravel apps.) I see three main reasons why a user might choose to have their deployment tasks in Envoy over gitlab:
Familiarity
Laravel developers are likely to have more familiarity with the languages that Envoy uses for deployment (PHP and the Blade syntax) than they are with the languages that gitlab uses (Yaml formatting with gitlab's pipeline syntax.)
Keeping the less familiar .gitlab-ci.yml file simple and adding the bulk of the complexity to the more familiar Envoy file may save the developer time.
Portability
Some developers may want the option to switch between CI platforms. By keeping the gitlab-ci file simple and having the bulk of the deployment logic in the Envoy file, the developer could switch to another CI server, like Jenkins, without needing to rewrite the deployment code. (Or, as in a case that I've seen, the developer may be using both gitlab-ci and Jenkins to build their software. Using Envoy would mean more shared code between the two CI platforms.)
Existing Stack
Envoy Task Runner uses software that is already required for Laravel deployment (PHP and Composer.) Gitlab, on the other hand, requires the installation of gitlab-runner on a machine in order to deploy.
I've been experimenting with Docker recently on building some services to play around with and one thing that keeps nagging me has been putting passwords in a Dockerfile. I'm a developer so storing passwords in source feels like a punch in the face. Should this even be a concern? Are there any good conventions on how to handle passwords in Dockerfiles?
Definitely it is a concern. Dockerfiles are commonly checked in to repositories and shared with other people. An alternative is to provide any credentials (usernames, passwords, tokens, anything sensitive) as environment variables at runtime. This is possible via the -e argument (for individual vars on the CLI) or --env-file argument (for multiple variables in a file) to docker run. Read this for using environmental with docker-compose.
Using --env-file is definitely a safer option since this protects against the secrets showing up in ps or in logs if one uses set -x.
However, env vars are not particularly secure either. They are visible via docker inspect, and hence they are available to any user that can run docker commands. (Of course, any user that has access to docker on the host also has root anyway.)
My preferred pattern is to use a wrapper script as the ENTRYPOINT or CMD. The wrapper script can first import secrets from an outside location in to the container at run time, then execute the application, providing the secrets. The exact mechanics of this vary based on your run time environment. In AWS, you can use a combination of IAM roles, the Key Management Service, and S3 to store encrypted secrets in an S3 bucket. Something like HashiCorp Vault or credstash is another option.
AFAIK there is no optimal pattern for using sensitive data as part of the build process. In fact, I have an SO question on this topic. You can use docker-squash to remove layers from an image. But there's no native functionality in Docker for this purpose.
You may find shykes comments on config in containers useful.
Our team avoids putting credentials in repositories, so that means they're not allowed in Dockerfile. Our best practice within applications is to use creds from environment variables.
We solve for this using docker-compose.
Within docker-compose.yml, you can specify a file that contains the environment variables for the container:
env_file:
- .env
Make sure to add .env to .gitignore, then set the credentials within the .env file like:
SOME_USERNAME=myUser
SOME_PWD_VAR=myPwd
Store the .env file locally or in a secure location where the rest of the team can grab it.
See: https://docs.docker.com/compose/environment-variables/#/the-env-file
Docker now (version 1.13 or 17.06 and higher) has support for managing secret information. Here's an overview and more detailed documentation
Similar feature exists in kubernetes and DCOS
You should never add credentials to a container unless you're OK broadcasting the creds to whomever can download the image. In particular, doing and ADD creds and later RUN rm creds is not secure because the creds file remains in the final image in an intermediate filesystem layer. It's easy for anyone with access to the image to extract it.
The typical solution I've seen when you need creds to checkout dependencies and such is to use one container to build another. I.e., typically you have some build environment in your base container and you need to invoke that to build your app container. So the simple solution is to add your app source and then RUN the build commands. This is insecure if you need creds in that RUN. Instead what you do is put your source into a local directory, run (as in docker run) the container to perform the build step with the local source directory mounted as volume and the creds either injected or mounted as another volume. Once the build step is complete you build your final container by simply ADDing the local source directory which now contains the built artifacts.
I'm hoping Docker adds some features to simplify all this!
Update: looks like the method going forward will be to have nested builds. In short, the dockerfile would describe a first container that is used to build the run-time environment and then a second nested container build that can assemble all the pieces into the final container. This way the build-time stuff isn't in the second container. This of a Java app where you need the JDK for building the app but only the JRE for running it. There are a number of proposals being discussed, best to start from https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/7115 and follow some of the links for alternate proposals.
An alternative to using environment variables, which can get messy if you have a lot of them, is to use volumes to make a directory on the host accessible in the container.
If you put all your credentials as files in that folder, then the container can read the files and use them as it pleases.
For example:
$ echo "secret" > /root/configs/password.txt
$ docker run -v /root/configs:/cfg ...
In the Docker container:
# echo Password is `cat /cfg/password.txt`
Password is secret
Many programs can read their credentials from a separate file, so this way you can just point the program to one of the files.
run-time only solution
docker-compose also provides a non-swarm mode solution (since v1.11:
Secrets using bind mounts).
The secrets are mounted as files below /run/secrets/ by docker-compose. This solves the problem at run-time (running the container), but not at build-time (building the image), because /run/secrets/ is not mounted at build-time. Furthermore this behavior depends on running the container with docker-compose.
Example:
Dockerfile
FROM alpine
CMD cat /run/secrets/password
docker-compose.yml
version: '3.1'
services:
app:
build: .
secrets:
- password
secrets:
password:
file: password.txt
To build, execute:
docker-compose up -d
Further reading:
mikesir87's blog - Using Docker Secrets during Development
My approach seems to work, but is probably naive. Tell me why it is wrong.
ARGs set during docker build are exposed by the history subcommand, so no go there. However, when running a container, environment variables given in the run command are available to the container, but are not part of the image.
So, in the Dockerfile, do setup that does not involve secret data. Set a CMD of something like /root/finish.sh. In the run command, use environmental variables to send secret data into the container. finish.sh uses the variables essentially to finish build tasks.
To make managing the secret data easier, put it into a file that is loaded by docker run with the --env-file switch. Of course, keep the file secret. .gitignore and such.
For me, finish.sh runs a Python program. It checks to make sure it hasn't run before, then finishes the setup (e.g., copies the database name into Django's settings.py).
There is a new docker command for "secrets" management. But that only works for swarm clusters.
docker service create
--name my-iis
--publish target=8000,port=8000
--secret src=homepage,target="\inetpub\wwwroot\index.html"
microsoft/iis:nanoserver
The issue 13490 "Secrets: write-up best practices, do's and don'ts, roadmap" just got a new update in Sept. 2020, from Sebastiaan van Stijn:
Build time secrets are now possible when using buildkit as builder; see the blog post "Build secrets and SSH forwarding in Docker 18.09", Nov. 2018, from Tõnis Tiigi.
The documentation is updated: "Build images with BuildKit"
The RUN --mount option used for secrets will graduate to the default (stable) Dockerfile syntax soon.
That last part is new (Sept. 2020)
New Docker Build secret information
The new --secret flag for docker build allows the user to pass secret information to be used in the Dockerfile for building docker images in a safe way that will not end up stored in the final image.
id is the identifier to pass into the docker build --secret.
This identifier is associated with the RUN --mount identifier to use in the Dockerfile.
Docker does not use the filename of where the secret is kept outside of the Dockerfile, since this may be sensitive information.
dst renames the secret file to a specific file in the Dockerfile RUN command to use.
For example, with a secret piece of information stored in a text file:
$ echo 'WARMACHINEROX' > mysecret.txt
And with a Dockerfile that specifies use of a BuildKit frontend docker/dockerfile:1.0-experimental, the secret can be accessed.
For example:
# syntax = docker/dockerfile:1.0-experimental
FROM alpine
# shows secret from default secret location:
RUN --mount=type=secret,id=mysecret cat /run/secrets/mysecret
# shows secret from custom secret location:
RUN --mount=type=secret,id=mysecret,dst=/foobar cat /foobar
This Dockerfile is only to demonstrate that the secret can be accessed. As you can see the secret printed in the build output. The final image built will not have the secret file:
$ docker build --no-cache --progress=plain --secret id=mysecret,src=mysecret.txt .
...
#8 [2/3] RUN --mount=type=secret,id=mysecret cat /run/secrets/mysecret
#8 digest: sha256:5d8cbaeb66183993700828632bfbde246cae8feded11aad40e524f54ce7438d6
#8 name: "[2/3] RUN --mount=type=secret,id=mysecret cat /run/secrets/mysecret"
#8 started: 2018-08-31 21:03:30.703550864 +0000 UTC
#8 1.081 WARMACHINEROX
#8 completed: 2018-08-31 21:03:32.051053831 +0000 UTC
#8 duration: 1.347502967s
#9 [3/3] RUN --mount=type=secret,id=mysecret,dst=/foobar cat /foobar
#9 digest: sha256:6c7ebda4599ec6acb40358017e51ccb4c5471dc434573b9b7188143757459efa
#9 name: "[3/3] RUN --mount=type=secret,id=mysecret,dst=/foobar cat /foobar"
#9 started: 2018-08-31 21:03:32.052880985 +0000 UTC
#9 1.216 WARMACHINEROX
#9 completed: 2018-08-31 21:03:33.523282118 +0000 UTC
#9 duration: 1.470401133s
...
The 12-Factor app methodology tells, that any configuration should be stored in environment variables.
Docker compose could do variable substitution in configuration, so that could be used to pass passwords from host to docker.
Starting from Version 20.10, besides using secret-file, you could also provide secrets directly with env.
buildkit: secrets: allow providing secrets with env moby/moby#41234 docker/cli#2656 moby/buildkit#1534
Support --secret id=foo,env=MY_ENV as an alternative for storing a secret value to a file.
--secret id=GIT_AUTH_TOKEN will load env if it exists and the file does not.
secret-file:
THIS IS SECRET
Dockerfile:
# syntax = docker/dockerfile:1.3
FROM python:3.8-slim-buster
COPY build-script.sh .
RUN --mount=type=secret,id=mysecret ./build-script.sh
build-script.sh:
cat /run/secrets/mysecret
Execution:
$ export MYSECRET=theverysecretpassword
$ export DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1
$ docker build --progress=plain --secret id=mysecret,env=MYSECRET -t abc:1 . --no-cache
......
#9 [stage-0 3/3] RUN --mount=type=secret,id=mysecret ./build-script.sh
#9 sha256:e32137e3eeb0fe2e4b515862f4cd6df4b73019567ae0f49eb5896a10e3f7c94e
#9 0.931 theverysecretpassword#9 DONE 1.5s
......
With Docker v1.9 you can use the ARG instruction to fetch arguments passed by command line to the image on build action. Simply use the --build-arg flag. So you can avoid to keep explicit password (or other sensible information) on the Dockerfile and pass them on the fly.
source: https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/build/ http://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/builder/#arg
Example:
Dockerfile
FROM busybox
ARG user
RUN echo "user is $user"
build image command
docker build --build-arg user=capuccino -t test_arguments -f path/to/dockerfile .
during the build it print
$ docker build --build-arg user=capuccino -t test_arguments -f ./test_args.Dockerfile .
Sending build context to Docker daemon 2.048 kB
Step 1 : FROM busybox
---> c51f86c28340
Step 2 : ARG user
---> Running in 43a4aa0e421d
---> f0359070fc8f
Removing intermediate container 43a4aa0e421d
Step 3 : RUN echo "user is $user"
---> Running in 4360fb10d46a
**user is capuccino**
---> 1408147c1cb9
Removing intermediate container 4360fb10d46a
Successfully built 1408147c1cb9
Hope it helps! Bye.
Something simply like this will work I guess if it is bash shell.
read -sp "db_password:" password | docker run -itd --name <container_name> --build-arg mysql_db_password=$db_password alpine /bin/bash
Simply read it silently and pass as argument in Docker image. You need to accept the variable as ARG in Dockerfile.
While I totally agree there is no simple solution. There continues to be a single point of failure. Either the dockerfile, etcd, and so on. Apcera has a plan that looks like sidekick - dual authentication. In other words two container cannot talk unless there is a Apcera configuration rule. In their demo the uid/pwd was in the clear and could not be reused until the admin configured the linkage. For this to work, however, it probably meant patching Docker or at least the network plugin (if there is such a thing).