How to manage Docker private registry - docker

Question

I've set up Docker and running a private repository on example.com:5000. I followed the instructions listed here: https://docs.docker.com/registry/deploying/
And uses the docker-compose.yml:
registry:
restart: always
image: registry:2
ports:
- 5000:5000
environment:
REGISTRY_HTTP_TLS_CERTIFICATE: /certs/domain.crt
REGISTRY_HTTP_TLS_KEY: /certs/domain.key
REGISTRY_AUTH: htpasswd
REGISTRY_AUTH_HTPASSWD_PATH: /auth/htpasswd
REGISTRY_AUTH_HTPASSWD_REALM: Registry Realm
volumes:
- /path/data:/var/lib/registry
- /path/certs:/certs
- /path/auth:/auth
I can push and pull images to the repository, but I can't get docker search example.com:5000/library to run. I get an: Error response from daemon: Unexpected status code 404.
When I point curl to the endpoint I get the following result:
$ curl -v -X GET http://example.com:5000/v2/images
Note: Unnecessary use of -X or --request, GET is already inferred.
* Trying 37.139.20.160...
* Connected to example.com (192.167.201.2) port 5000 (#0)
> GET /v2/images HTTP/1.1
> Host: domain.com:5000
> User-Agent: curl/7.47.0
> Accept: */*
>
* Connection #0 to host example.com left intact
How can I make the search command working so that I can manage the repository? And where can I find the API documentation of the endpoint? Or are there better ways to manage a Docker private repo?

Answer 1

It seems you have to activate the search option, according to Search-engine options
The Docker Registry can optionally index repository information in a database for the GET /v1/search endpoint.
(I don't see a search in the V2 API. You can list tags)
The search_backend setting selects the search backend to use.
If search_backend is empty, no index is built, and the search endpoint always returns empty results.
For instance, using the SQLAlchemy database
common:
search_backend: sqlalchemy
sqlalchemy_index_database: sqlite:////tmp/docker-registry.db
On initialization, the SQLAlchemyIndex class checks the database version. If the database doesn't exist yet (or does exist, but lacks a version table), the SQLAlchemyIndex creates the database and required tables.