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Creating an image

There are several reasons to make your own docker image, but mostly there are two. The application you want to run does not have a docker image available, or there is an image available, but it is not working on OpenShift. Due to the fact that OpenShift is designed to be a shared cluster, where users from different teams will run applications in the same hardware, OpenShift has to add limitations and runs things differently than in a standard Kubernetes cluster.

Rahti 2's registry has an image size limit of 5GB. The bigger is an image, the worse the experience is to work with it. It takes more time to pull, and it fills up the image's cache of the node faster. An image more than 1GB is already considered a very big image. See the article about keeping docker images small

Building images locally

In this example we are going to use the official nginx image built over the Alpine Linux distribution, and make the necessary changes to make it work in OpenShift.

Three steps are needed to run build an image locally in a computer.

  • First a Dockerfile must be written, for example this:
FROM nginx:alpine

# support running as arbitrary user which belongs to the root group
RUN chmod g+rwx /var/cache/nginx /var/run /var/log/nginx && \
    chown nginx.root /var/cache/nginx /var/run /var/log/nginx && \
    # users are not allowed to listen on privileged ports
    sed -i.bak 's/listen\(.*\)80;/listen 8081;/' /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf && \
    # Make /etc/nginx/html/ available to use
    mkdir -p /etc/nginx/html/ && chmod 777 /etc/nginx/html/ && \
    # comment user directive as master process is run as user in OpenShift anyhow
    sed -i.bak 's/^user/#user/' /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

WORKDIR /usr/share/nginx/html/
EXPOSE 8081

USER nginx:root

The Dockerfile is:

  1. Giving write permissions to the root group (not the root user) to several folders that nginx needs to write to (/var/cache/nginx, /var/run, /var/log/nginx, and /etc/nginx/html/). Applications are run using a random user and the root group.
  2. Changing the port where nginx listens to, as only root is allowed to listen on privileged ports (<1024).
  3. And finally comment out the user configuration directive.

The original nginx:alpine image has 5 layers, and we will adding a new one (RUN).

A simpler example of Dockerfile could be:

FROM alpine

RUN apk add git

This is just installing git over alpine, and add also a new layer.

See the Dockerfile reference docs.

Then, the following command must be used to build the image docker.io/user/name:tag:

docker build . -t docker.io/user/name:tag

And finally, to publish the image:

docker push docker.io/user/name:tag

Using Rahti 2 to build container images

The methods below use Rahti 2 to build the images.

Using a local folder for building

This method allows to build an image using a local folder containing a Dockerfile and the other required project files. It is useful when it is not possible or inconvenient to allow Rahti 2 to clone a repository directly.

This assumes that you have authorized a Rahti 2 command line session and created a project in Rahti 2. Instructions for that are shown in Chapter Command line tool usage.

Steps:

Create Rahti 2 specific definitions with oc new-build command. Be sure not to be in a directory under git version control:

$ oc new-build --to=my-hello-image:devel --name=my-hello --binary
    * A Docker build using binary input will be created
      * The resulting image will be pushed to image stream tag "my-hello-image:devel"
      * A binary build was created, use 'start-build --from-dir' to trigger a new build

--> Creating resources with label build=my-hello ...
    imagestream.image.openshift.io "my-hello-image" created
    buildconfig.build.openshift.io "my-hello" created
--> Success

Then you need a Dockerfile, you can use any of the previous Dockerfile in the previous example, or any other one you may have around. In order to tell OpenShift to build the image, just cd to the folder where the Dockerfile is, and start build with the oc start-build command, it will take any file in the current directory and output the build process to local terminal:

oc start-build my-hello --from-dir=./ -F

The image will be visible to internet at image-registry.apps.2.rahti.csc.fi/<project-name>/my-hello-image:devel for docker compatible clients but you will first need to authenticate in order to pull it.

For command-line usage with docker compatible clients, the docker repository password will be the access token shown when authorizing Rahti 2 command line session and user name can be unused.

docker login -u g -p $(oc whoami -t) image-registry.apps.2.rahti.csc.fi

Using the Source to Image mechanism

OpenShift allows to build and deploy code without writing a Dockerfile. This is called Source to Image or s2i. It is used by running oc new-app URL#branch, the #branch is optional. For example, use the official python sample code:

$ oc new-app https://github.com/CSCfi/nodejs-16-rahti-example.git
--> Found Docker image 9d200cd (7 weeks old) from Docker Hub for "node:16.15.0"

    * An image stream tag will be created as "node:16.15.0" that will track the source image
    * A Docker build using source code from https://github.com/CSCfi/nodejs-16-rahti-example.git will be created
      * The resulting image will be pushed to image stream tag "nodejs-16-rahti-example:latest"
      * Every time "node:16.15.0" changes a new build will be triggered
    * This image will be deployed in deployment config "nodejs-16-rahti-example"
    * Port 8080/tcp will be load balanced by service "nodejs-16-rahti-example"
      * Other containers can access this service through the hostname "nodejs-16-rahti-example"
    * WARNING: Image "node:16.15.0" runs as the 'root' user which may not be permitted by your cluster administrator

--> Creating resources ...
    imagestream.image.openshift.io "node" created
    imagestream.image.openshift.io "nodejs-16-rahti-example" created
    buildconfig.build.openshift.io "nodejs-16-rahti-example" created
    deploymentconfig.apps.openshift.io "nodejs-16-rahti-example" created
    service "nodejs-16-rahti-example" created
--> Success
    Build scheduled, use 'oc logs -f bc/nodejs-16-rahti-example' to track its progress.
    Application is not exposed. You can expose services to the outside world by executing one or more of the commands below:
     'oc expose svc/nodejs-16-rahti-example' 
    Run 'oc status' to view your app.

Then do as suggested and expose the new application to the outside world:

$ oc expose svc/nodejs-16-rahti-example
route.route.openshift.io/nodejs-16-rahti-example exposed

In order to get the new route hostname do:

oc get route nodejs-16-rahti-example

If you enter the hostname in a browser, you will see the "Hello World!" message.

A new build can be triggered in the command line:

oc start-build nodejs-16-rahti-example

Or using webhooks

Using the inline Dockerfile method

It is possible to create a new build using a Dockerfile provided in the command line. By doing this, the Dockerfile itself will be embedded in the Build object, so there is no need for an external Git repository.

oc new-build -D $'FROM centos:7'

In this example, we will build an image that is a copy of CentOS 7.

It is also possible to create a build from a given Dockerfile:

cat Dockerfile | oc new-build -D -

Troubleshooting

If your build fails in Rahti 2, it could mean that your application needs more memory than is provided by default. Unfortunately, it's not possible to set the limits and/or requests from the CLI.

You can create a yaml file and then apply it with the command oc apply -f {your_yaml_file}.yaml or edit your current BuildConfig in the Rahti 2 webUI.
In the Administrator view, navigate to Builds > BuildConfigs and click on your BuildConfig. Select the YAML tab.

Under spec you should see resources: {}. From here, add limits.cpu, limits.memory, requests.cpu and requests.memory: 

resources:
  limits:
    cpu: 400m
    memory: 8Gi
  requests:
    cpu: 50m
    memory: 1600Mi

Note that they cannot be more than 5x apart (default ratio, more information here).

Save and run the build again, and if it succeeds, check the metrics and see how much memory was used. You can adjust the memory limit to 10-20% more than what it was used.

Last update: April 12, 2024