Docker compose secrets - docker

The newer docker compose (vs docker-compose) allows you to set secrets in the build section. This is nice because if you do secrets at runtime then the file is readable by anyone that can get into the container by reading /run/secrets/<my_secret>.
Unfortunately, it appears that it's only possible to pass the secrets via either the environment or a file. Doing it via the environment doesn't seem like a great idea because someone on the box could read the /proc/<pid>/environment while the image is being built to snag the secrets. Doing it via a file on disk isn't good because then the secret is being stored on disk unencrypted.
It seems like the best way to do this would be with something like
docker swarm init
$(read -sp "Enter your secret: "; echo $REPLY) | docker secret create my_secret -
docker compose build --no-cache
docker swarm leave --force
Alas, it appears that Docker can't read from the swarm for build time secrets for some unknown reason.
What is the best way to do this? This seems to be a slight oversight, along the lines of docker secrete create not having a way to prompt for the value instead of having to resort to to hacks like above to keep the secret out of your bash history.

UPDATE: This is for SWARM/Remote docker systems, not targeted on local build time secrets. (I realised you were asking for those primarily and just mentioned swarm in the second part of the question. I believe it still holds good advice for some so ill leave the answer undeleted.
Docker Swarm can only read runtime-based secrets you create with the docker secret create command and must already exist on the cluster when deploying stack. We had been in the same situation before. We solved the "issue" using docker contexts. You can create an SSH-based docker context which points to a manager (we just use the first one). Then on your LOCAL device (we use Win as the base platform and WSL2/Linux VM for the UNIX part), you can simply run docker commands with inline --context property. More on context on official docs. For instance: docker --context production secret create .... And so on.

Related

Handling secrets inside docker container without using docker swarm

One question, how do you handle secrets inside dockerfile without using docker swarm. Let's say, you have some private repo on npm and restoring the same using .npmrc inside dockerfile by providing credentials. After package restore, obviously I am deleting .npmrc file from container. Similarly, it goes for NuGet.config as well for restoring private repos inside container. Currently, I am supplying these credentials as --build-arg while building the dockerfile.
But command like docker history --no-trunc will show the password in the log. Is there any decent way to handle this. Currently, I am not on kubernetes. Hence, need to handle the same in docker itself.
One way I can think of is mounting the /run/secrets/ and storing the same inside either by using some text file containing password or via .env file. But then, this .env file has to be part of pipeline to complete the CI/CD process, which means it has to be part of source control. Is there any way to avoid this or something can be done via pipeline itself or any type of encryption/decryption logic can be applied here?
Thanks.
Thanks.
First, keep in mind that files deleted in one layer still exist in previous layers. So deleting files doesn't help either.
There are three ways that are secure:
Download all code in advance outside of the Docker build, where you have access to the secret, and then just COPY in the stuff you downloaded.
Use BuildKit, which is an experimental Docker feature that enables secrets in a secure way (https://docs.docker.com/develop/develop-images/build_enhancements/#new-docker-build-secret-information).
Serve secrets from a network server running locally (e.g. in another container). See here for detailed explanation of how to do so: https://pythonspeed.com/articles/docker-build-secrets/
Let me try to explain docker secret here.
Docker secret works with docker swarm. For that you need to run
$ docker swarm init --advertise-addr=$(hostname -i)
It makes the node as master. Now you can create your secret here like: -
crate a file /db_pass and put your password in this file.
$docker secret create db-pass /db_pass
this creates your secret. Now if you want to list the secrets created, run command
$ docker secret ls
Lets use secret while running the service: -
$docker service create --name mysql-service --secret source=db_pass,target=mysql_root_password --secret source=db_pass,target=mysql_password -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD_FILE="/run/secrets/mysql_root_password" -e MYSQL_PASSWORD_FILE="/run/secrets/mysql_password" -e MYSQL_USER="wordpress" -e MYSQL_DATABASE="wordpress" mysql:latest
In the above command /run/secrets/mysql_root_password and /run/secrets/mysql_password files location is from container which stores the source file (db_pass) data
source=db_pass,target=mysql_root_password ( it creates file /run/secrets/mysql_root_password inside the container with db_pass value)
source=db_pass,target=mysql_password (it creates file /run/secrets/mysql_password inside the container with db_pass value)
See the screenshot from container which container secret file data: -

How to "docker push" to dynamic insecure registries?

OS: Amazon Linux (hosted on AWS)
Docker version: 17.x
Tools: Ansible, Docker
Our developers use Ansible to be able to spin up individual AWS spot environments that get populated with docker images that get built on their local machines, pushed into a docker registry created on the AWS spot machine, then pulled down and run.
When the devs do this locally on their Macbooks, ansible will orchestrate building the code with sbt, spin up an AWS spot instance, run a docker registry, push the image into the docker registry, command the instance to pull down the image and run it, run a testsuite, etc.
To make things better and easier for non-devs to be able to run individual test environments, we put the ansible script behind Jenkins and use their username to let ansible create a domain name in Route53 that points to their temporary spot instance environment.
This all works great without the registry -- i.e. using JFrog Artifactory to have these dynamic envs just pull pre-built images. It lets QA team members spin up any version of the env they want. But now to allow it to build code and push, I need to have an insecure registry and that is where things fell apart...
Since any user can run this, the Route53 domain name is dynamic. That means I cannot just hardcode in daemon.json the --insecure-registry entry. I have tried to find a way to set a wildcard registry but it didnt seem to work for me. Also since this is a shared build server (the one that is running the ansible commands) so I dont want to keep adding entries and restarting docker because other things might be running.
So, to summarize the questions:
Is there a way to use a wildcard for the insecure-registry entry?
How can I get docker to recognize insecure-registry entry without restarting docker daemon?
So far I've found this solution to satisfy my needs, but not 100% happy yet. I'll work on it more. It doesn't handle the first case of a wildcard, but it does seem to work for the 2nd question about reloading without restart.
First problem is I was editing the wrong file. It doesn't respect /etc/sysconfig/docker nor does it respect $HOME/.docker/daemon.json. The only file that works on Amazon Linux for me is /etc/docker/daemon.json so I manually edited it and then tested a reload and verified with docker info. I'll work on this more to programmatically be able to insert entries as needed, but the manual test works:
sudo vim /etc/docker/daemon.json
sudo systemctl reload docker.service
docker info

Securing/Encrypting the sensitive environment variables

I'm using an env file which contains sensitive information for docker creation.
But the thing is they are not secure. They can be easily viewed via docker inspect, and hence they are available to any user that can run docker commands.
I'm looking for a way in which I can secure these values from the outside users, without using docker swarm.
Is there a way to achieve this?
For variables needed in built-time (image creation):
ARG: --build-arg
For env variables needed when container starts:
--env-file: It lets you nobody can see your variables doing history inspecting your cli command.
Use docker secrets: possible in swarm, docker enterprise. (docker swarm secrets)

Docker backup container with startup parameters

Im facing the same problem since months now and i dont have an adequate solution.
Im running several Containers based on different images. Some of them were started using portainer with some arguments and volumes. Some of them were started using the CLI and docker start with some arguments and parameters.
Now all these settings are stored somewhere. Because if i stop and retart such a container, everything works well again. but, if i do a commit, backup it with tar and load it on a different system and do a docker start, it has lost all of its settings.
The procedure as described here: https://linuxconfig.org/docker-container-backup-and-recovery does not work in my case.
Now im thinking about to write an own web application which will create me some docker compose files based on my setting rather than to just do a docker start with the correct params. This web application should also take care of the volumes (just folders) and do a incremental backup of them with borg to a remote server.
But actually this is only an idea. Is there a way to "extract" a docker compose file of a running containter? So that i can redeploy a container 1:1 to an other server and just have to run docker run mycontainer and it will have the same settings?
Or do i have to write my web app? Or have i missed some page on google and there is already such a solution?
Thank you!
To see the current configuration of a container, you can use:
docker container inspect $container_id
You can then use those configurations to run your container on another machine. There is no easy import/export of these settings to start another container that I'm aware of.
Most people use a docker-compose.yml to define how they want a container run. They also build images with a Dockerfile and transfer them with a registry server rather than a save/load.
The docker-compose.yml can be used with docker-compose or docker stack deploy and allows the configuration of the container to be documented as a configuration file that is tracked in version control, rather than error prone user entered settings. Running containers by hand or starting them with a GUI is useful for a quick test or debugging, but not for reproducibility.
You would like to backup the instance but the commands you're providing are to backup the image. I'd suggest to update your Dockerfile to solve the issue. In case you really want to go down the saving the instance current status, you should use the docker export and docker import commands.
Reference:
https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/import/
https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/export/
NOTE: the docker export does not export the content of the volumes anyway, I suggest you to should refer to https://docs.docker.com/engine/admin/volumes/volumes/

How to setup git and git-sync in a docker container?

I want to setup up git and git-sync in my new docker container but I am not sure how to do that or if that is the right way to do it? If there is a easier way to do it for example I also use kubernetes and I am trying to see what kubernetes can do as far as git-sync is concerned. Any ideas?
Don't treat Docker container as a VM. Usually you shouldn't go to the container to run commands or to set up settings. Use docker build to build all what do you need (jar file, JVM server, ....) from Dockerfile and use environment variable to handle any settings (or volume with setting file). Your container image entrypoint (cmd) can be some your script (bootstrap.sh), which can handle also some start activities. Generally: your container should be stateless. For versioning use tags. Take your time and read some doc and some real Docker app examples. You will see there what is the best practice.

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