Best practice using docker inside Jenkins? - docker

Hi I'm learning how to use Jenkins integrated with Docker and I don't understand what should I do to communicate them.
I'm running Jenkins inside a Docker container and I want to build an image in a pipeline. So I need to execute some docker commands inside the Jenkins container.
So the thing here is where docker come from. I understand that we need to bind mount the docker host daemon (socket) to the Jenkins container but this container still needs the binaries to execute Docker.
I have seen some approaches to achieve this and I'm confused what should I do. I have seen:
bind mount the docker binary (/usr/local/bin/docker:/usr/bin/docker)
installing docker in the image
if I'm not wrong the blue ocean image comes with Docker pre-installed (I have not found any documentation of this)
Also I don't understand what Docker plugins for Jenkins can do for me.
Thanks!

Docker has a client server architecture. The server is the docker deamon and the client is basically the command line interface that allows you to execute docker ... from the command line.
Thus when running Jenkins inside Docker you will need access to connect to the deamon. This is acheieved by binding the /var/run/docker.sock into the container.
At this point you need something to communicate with the Deamon which is the server. You can either do that by providing access to docker binaries. This can be achived by either mounting the docker binaries, or installing the
client binaries inside the Jenkins container.
Alternatively, you can communicate with the deamon using the Docker Rest API without having the docker client binaries inside the Jenkins container. You can for instance build an image using the API.
Also I don't understand what Docker plugins for Jenkins can do for me
The Docker plugin for Jenkins isn't useful for the use case that you described. This plugin allows you to provision Jenkins slaves using Docker. You can for instance run a compilation inside a Docker container that gets automatically provisioned by Jenkins

It is not best practice to use Docker with Jenkins. It is also not a bad practice. The relationship between Jenkins and Docker is not determined in such a manner that having Docker is good or bad.
Jenkins is a Continuous Integration Server, which is a fancy way of saying "a service that builds stuff at various times, according to predefined rules"
If your end result is a docker image to be distributed, you have Jenkins call your docker build command, collect the output, and report on the success / failure of the docker build command.
If your end result is not a docker image, you have Jenkins call your non-docker build command, collect the output, and report on the success / failure of the non-docker build.
How you have the build launched depends on how you would build the product. Makefiles are launched with make, Apache Ant with ant, Apache Maven with mvn package, docker with docker build and so on. From Jenkin's perspective, it doesn't matter, provided you provide a complete set of rules to launch the build, collect the output, and report the success or failure.
Now, for the 'Docker plugin for Jenkins'. As #yamenk stated, Jenkins uses build slaves to perform the build. That plugin will launch the build slave within a Docker container. The thing built within that container may or may not be a docker image.
Finally, running Jenkins inside a docker container just means you need to bind your Docker-ized Jenkins to the external world, as #yamenk indicates, or you'll have trouble launching builds.

Bind mounting the docker binary into the jenkins image only works if the jenkins images is "close enough" - it has to contain the required shared libraries!
So when sing a standard jenkins/jenkins:2.150.1 within an ubuntu 18.04 this is not working unfortunately. (it looked so nice and slim ;)
So the the requirement is to build or find a docker image which contains a compatible docker client for the host docker service is.
Many people seem to install docker in their jenkins image....

Related

Test Docker image on Kubernetes, without Docker Daemon

I am new in containers, so I will try to explain my issue as detailed as I can.
I run a Jenkins flow on a Kubernetes agent, that builds a Docker image and push it on a repository. I want to modify the Jenkins flow so the image is tested (some functional tests) before pushed to the repository. I found this project on Github https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/container-structure-test that is convenient for testing, but unfortunately it requires Docker Daemon that is not available on my Kubernetes agent.
Has anyone tried this before? Or does anyone know any workaround? Thanks!
I tried to include a docker container in the pod I use for the Kubernetes agent, create a separate testing file and use this container to run the tests for the image (without the use of the Github project). However, the absence of Docker Daemon is the problem in this case as well.
For running containers inside Jenkins on Kuberntes agents, you can either use Jenkins Docker in Docker agent or Jenkins Podman agent which is a containerless docker alternative with the same cli.
Then, encapsulate tests in a container image and run them inside either of the above agents.
Disclaimer: I wrote above posts.
Also note that there's an option not to use docker daemon for the project you mentioned. Use tar driver instead.

Docker in Docker, Building docker agents in a docker contained Jenkins Server

I am currently running a Jenkins with Docker. When trying to build docker apps, i am facing some doubt on if i should use Docker in Docker (Dind) by binding the /var/run/docker.sock file or by installing another instance of docker in my Jenkins Docker. I actually saw that previously, it was discouraged to use something else than the docker.sock.
I don't actually understand why we should use something else than the docker daemon from the host apart from not polluting it.
sources : https://itnext.io/docker-in-docker-521958d34efd
Best solution for "jenkins in docker container needs docker" case is to add your host as a node(slave) in jenkins. This will make every build step (literally everything) run in your host machine. It took me a month to find perfect setup.
Mount docker socket in jenkins container: You will lose context. The files you want to COPY inside image is located inside workspace in jenkins container and your docker is running at host. COPY fails for sure.
Install docker client in jenkins container: You have to alter official jenkins image. Adds complexity. And you will lose context too.
Add your host as jenkins node: Perfect. You have the contex. No altering the official image.
Without completely understanding why you would need to use Docker in Docker - I suspect you need to meet some special requirements considering the environment in which you build the actual image, may I suggest you multistage building of docker images? You might find it useful as it enables you to first build the building environment and then build the actual image (hence the name 'multistage-building). Check it out here: https://docs.docker.com/develop/develop-images/multistage-build/

Docker pipeline's "inside" not working in Jenkins slave running within Docker container

I'm having issues getting a Jenkins pipeline script to work that uses the Docker Pipeline plugin to run parts of the build within a Docker container. Both Jenkins server and slave run within Docker containers themselves.
Setup
Jenkins server running in a Docker container
Jenkins slave based on custom image (https://github.com/simulogics/protokube-jenkins-slave) running in a Docker container as well
Docker daemon container based on docker:1.12-dind image
Slave started like so: docker run --link=docker-daemon:docker --link=jenkins:master -d --name protokube-jenkins-slave -e EXTRA_PARAMS="-username xxx -password xxx -labels docker" simulogics/protokube-jenkins-slave
Basic Docker operations (pull, build and push images) are working just fine with this setup.
(Non-)Goals
I want the server to not have to know about Docker at all. This should be a characteristic of the slave/node.
I do not need dynamic allocation of slaves or ephemeral slaves. One slave started manually is quite enough for my purposes.
Ideally, I want to move away from my custom Docker image for the slave and instead use the inside function provided by the Docker pipeline plugin within a generic Docker slave.
Problem
This is a representative build step that's causing the issue:
image.inside {
stage ('Install Ruby Dependencies') {
sh "bundle install"
}
}
This would cause an error like this in the log:
sh: 1: cannot create /workspace/repo_branch-K5EM5XEVEIPSV2SZZUR337V7FG4BZXHD4VORYFYISRWIO3N6U67Q#tmp/durable-98bb4c3d/pid: Directory nonexistent
Previously, this warning would show:
71f4de289962-5790bfcc seems to be running inside container 71f4de28996233340c2aed4212248f1e73281f1cd7282a54a36ceeac8c65ec0a
but /workspace/repo_branch-K5EM5XEVEIPSV2SZZUR337V7FG4BZXHD4VORYFYISRWIO3N6U67Q could not be found among []
Interestingly enough, exactly this problem is described in CloudBees documentation for the plugin here https://go.cloudbees.com/docs/cloudbees-documentation/cje-user-guide/index.html#docker-workflow-sect-inside:
For inside to work, the Docker server and the Jenkins agent must use the same filesystem, so that the workspace can be mounted. The easiest way to ensure this is for the Docker server to be running on localhost (the same computer as the agent). Currently neither the Jenkins plugin nor the Docker CLI will automatically detect the case that the server is running remotely; a typical symptom would be errors from nested sh commands such as
cannot create /…#tmp/durable-…/pid: Directory nonexistent
or negative exit codes.
When Jenkins can detect that the agent is itself running inside a Docker container, it will automatically pass the --volumes-from argument to the inside container, ensuring that it can share a workspace with the agent.
Unfortunately, the detection described in the last paragraph doesn't seem to work.
Question
Since both my server and slave are running in Docker containers, what kid of volume mapping do I have to use to make it work?
I've seen variations of this issue, also with the agents powered by the kubernetes-plugin.
I think that for it to work the agent/jnlp container needs to share workspace with the build container.
By build container I am referring to the one that will run the bundle install command.
This could be possibly work via withArgs
The question is why would you want to do that? Most of the pipeline steps are being executed on master anyway and the actual build will run in the build container. What is the purpose of also using an agent?

Easiest way to do docker build command within Jenkinsfile running on Jenkins slave node?

Basic example of what I want my Jenkinsfile to do:
node {
sh 'docker build -t foo/bar .'
}
It seems like I need to install docker onto the Jenkins slave image that's executing my Jenkinsfile. Is there an easy way of doing this? (That Jenkins slave image is itself a docker container)
Are my assumptions correct?
When running with Jenkins master/slaves, the Jenkinsfile is executed by a Jenkins slave
Jenkins plugins installed via the Manage Plugins section (e.g. the Docker Plugin, or Gcloud SDK plugin) are only installed on the Jenkins masters, therefore I would need to manually build my Jenkins slave docker image and install docker on the image?
Since I also need access to the 'gcloud' command (I'm running Jenkins via Kubernetes Helm/Charts), I've been using the gcr.io/cloud-solutions-images/jenkins-k8s-slave image for my Jenkins slave.
Currently it errors out saying "docker: not found"
My assumption is that you want to docker build inside the Jenkins slave (which is a Kubernetes pod, I assume created by the Kubernetes Jenkins Plugin)
To set the stage, when Kubernetes creates pod that will act as a Jenkins slave, all commands that you execute inside the node will be executed inside that Kubernetes pod, inside one of the containers there (by default there will only be one container, but more on this later).
So you are actually trying to run a Docker command inside a container based on gcr.io/cloud-solutions-images/jenkins-k8s-slave, which is most likely based on the official Jenkins JNLP Slave, which does not container Docker!
From this point forward, there are two approaches that you can take:
use a slightly modified image based on the JNLP slave that also contains the Docker client and mount the Docker socket (/var/run/docker.sock) inside the container.
(You can find details on this approach here).
Here is an image that contains the Docker client and kubectl.
Here is a complete view of how to configure the Jenkins Plugin:
Note that you use a different image (you can create your own and add any binary you want there) and that you mount the Docker socket inside the container.
the problem with the first approach is that you create a new image forked from the official JNLP slave and manually add the Docker client. This means that whenever Jenkins or Docker have updates, you need to manually update your image and entire configuration, which is not that desirable.
Using the second approach you always use official images, and you use the JNLP slave to start other containers in the same pod.
Here is the full file from the image below
Here is the Jenkins Plugin documentation for doing this
As I said, the JNLP image will start a container that you specify in the same pod. Note that in order to use Docker from a container you still need to mount the Docker sock.
These are the two ways I found to achieve building images inside a Jenkins JNLP slave running inside a container.
The example also shows how to push the image using credential bindings from Jenkins, and how to update a Kubernetes deployment as part of the build process.
Some more resources:
deploy Jenkins to Kubernetes as Helm chart, configure plugins to install
Thanks,
Radu M

Jenkins and Docker

Is there a way to do automation with Jenkins to deploy and run containers? I heard we can use the Docker plugins for it. But there isn't any tutorials or info that explains how we can use Jenkins and Docker together. Anyone who uses them both care to share?
First off in my implementation of things Jenkins is actually a container in Docker.
Here's where it may seem things get bizarre: I actually install docker-ce inside of that container, not because I want to run Docker-in-Docker. I disable the Docker daemon from running (sysctl) but I want the command line.
I install docker-compose and docker-machine on the Jenkins host and add the "jenkins" userid to the docker group.
There's a bunch of other steps that I do but basically they are the same steps that a user is going to go through (except it's all in my Docker file) and I add the results of "docker-machine env" to the global variables in the Jenkins configuration.
head spinning yet?
Applications I have Jenkins deploying all have a "jenkins" subdirectory with a Jenkins file in it to perform the dirty work as a pipeline. (build/test/deploy)
Deployments for Java apps for instance involve copying the warfile for the application to the correct directory and when the container (or containers) start the application engine (tomcat, Jboss, whatever) picks it up and the application runs.
Have a look at
https://registry.hub.docker.com/search?q=jenkins&searchfield=
and at some Dockerfiles such as
https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/niaquinto/jenkins/dockerfile/
or
https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/aespinosa/jenkins/dockerfile/

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