So I've been looking around for an example of how I can specify environment variables for my Docker container from the AWS EB web interface. Typically in EB you can add environment properties which are available at runtime. I was using these for my previous deployment before I switched to Docker, but it appears as though Docker has some different rules with regards to how the environment properties are handled, is that correct? According to this article [1], ONLY the AWS credentials and PARAM1-PARAM5 will be present in the environment variables, but no custom properties will be present. That's what it sounds like to me, especially considering the containers that do support custom environment properties say it explicitly, like Python shown here [2]. Does anyone have any experience with this software combination? All I need to specify is a single environment variable that tells me whether the application is in "staging" or "production" mode, then all my environment specific configurations are set up by the application itself.
[1] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/command-options.html#command-options-docker
[2] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/command-options.html#command-options-python
Custom environment variables are supported with the AWS Elastic Beanstalk Docker container. Looks like a miss in the documentation. You can define custom environment variables for your environment and expect that they will be passed along to the docker container.
I've needed to pass environment variable in moment docker run using Elastic Beanstalk, but, is not allowed put this information in Dockerrun.aws.json.
Below the steps to resolve this scenario:
Create a folder .ebextensions
Create a .config file in the folder
Fill the .config file:
option_settings:
-option_name: VARIABLE_NAME value: VARIABLE_VALUE
Zip the folder .ebextensions file along with the Dockerrun.aws.json plus Dockerfile and upload it to Beanstalk
To see the result, inside EC2 instance, execute the command "docker inspect CONTAINER_ID" and will see the environment variable.
At least for me the environment variables that I set in the EB console were not being populated into the Docker container. I found the following link helpful though: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/elastic-beanstalk-env-variables-shell/
I used a slightly different approach where instead of exporting the vars to the shell, I used the ebextension to create a .env file which I then loaded from Python within my container.
The steps would be as follows:
Create a directory called '.ebextensions' in your app root dir
Create a file in this directory called 'load-env-vars.config'
Enter the following contents:
commands:
setvars:
command: /opt/elasticbeanstalk/bin/get-config environment | jq -r 'to_entries | .[] | "\(.key)=\"\(.value)\""' > /var/app/current/.env
packages:
yum:
jq: []
This will create a .env file in /var/app/current which is where your code should be within the EB instance
Use a package like python-dotenv to load the .env file or something similar if you aren't using Python. Note that this solution should be generic to any language/framework that you're using within your container.
I don't think the docs are a miss as Rohit Banga's answer suggests. Thought I agree that "you can define custom environment variables for your environment and expect that they will be passed along to the docker container".
The Docker container portion of the docs say, "No DOCKER-SPECIFIC configuration options are provided by Elastic Beanstalk" ... which doesn't necessarily mean that no environment variables are passed to the Docker container.
For example, for the Ruby container the Ruby-specific variables that are always passed are ... RAILS_SKIP_MIGRATIONS, RAILS_SKIP_ASSET_COMPILATION, BUNDLE_WITHOUT, RACK_ENV, RAILS_ENV. And so on. For the Ruby container, the assumption is you are running a Ruby app, hence setting some sensible defaults to make sure they are always available.
On the other hand, for the Docker container it seems it's open. You specify whatever variables you want ... they make no assumptions as to what you are running, Rails (Ruby), Django (Python) etc ... because it could be anything. They don't know before hand what you want to run and that makes it difficult to set sensible defaults.
Related
So I have been tasked with taking an existing dockerized version of a service, and creating docker images from this repository.
Creating the images is not the problem however, since the build command starts it up no problem. The issue is that this dockerfile copies an .env file during build, that holds variables that must be customizable after the build process is done (expected db and other endpoint info).
Is there some way to set that file to automatically be changed to reflect the environmental variables used in the docker run command? (I do want to note, that the docker image does copy the .env file into the working directory, it is not docker-compose reading that .env file)
I am sure that there has to be an easy way to do this, but all the tutorials I am pulling up just show you how to declare these variables, not how to get the files in docker to use them! Most of the code being run is javascript, and uses npm and yarn if that makes any difference...
docker does not provide any way to update files from environment variables on container start. But I don't think this is what you need anyway:
As I understand a .env file with default values is copied into the image at build time and you want to be able to change some of the values at runtime via container environment variables?
Usually such an .env file is read by the application and complemented by any variables set in the environment, i.e. you can override values from the file with environment variables. For javascript projects dotenv is a popular module to do this.
So to override say an API_ENDPOINT variable specified in .env you simply need to pass an environment variable with the same name and desired value to the container:
docker run -e API_ENDPOINT=/other/endpoint ...
If for some reason your applications do not work according to this convention and you actually need to change the values in the .env file you will need to write a custom script that updates/generates .env from the values of passed environment variables and use this script as ENTRYPOINT
I am trying to pass on environment variables to be read from an XML file inside a docker container running wildly app service and hosted inside REHL 7 image.
What I've done so far:
I've created an environment file as key value pair, for example: FILESERVICE_MAX_POOL_SIZE=5
I am running docker by referencing the environment file: docker run -d --env-file ./ENV_VARIABLES <myImage>
In the Dockerfile I copy the xml template I need: COPY dockerfiles/standalone.xml /opt/wildfly/standalone/configuration/standalone.xml
Inside the XML template I'm trying to reference the environment variable: <max-pool-size>${env.FILESERVICE_MAX_POOL_SIZE}</max-pool-size>
I can see those environment variables inside the running container as root but not as the wildly user which needs them. How can I make an attribute visible to a specific user other than root ?
Clearly I'm doing something fundamentally wrong here just not sure what ?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Problem solved: wildfly couldn't see the attributes because in my startup script I didn't add the -E flag for sudo to preserve environment variables.
I am running docker-ejabberd on ECS and all works fine. Now i want to replace the my_sql user/pass that exists on the ejabberd.yml file with the environment variables been passed to the image while running the container. There is no clear way described even on the docker-ejabberd wiki or anywhere on how to do that simply. Does anyone face a similar situation and how to do that?
For example in the ejabberd.yml i have this section:
sql_server: ${MYSQL_SERVER}
sql_database: ${MYSQL_DATABASE_NAME}
sql_username: ${MYSQL_USERNAME}
sql_password: ${MYSQL_PASSWORD}
sql_port: ${MYSQL_PORT}
I want to pass those vars as env vars while docker run and then replace them before the container run.
Side note: We are using ECS and passing the variables through the task defination without any issue.
I went through some topics recommend using the ENTRY_POINT command to run a script that replaces the file before running the container but not sure if that's a good idea.
Also, I have an idea of replacing the variables in this ejabberd.yml file in the CICD pipeline just before building the image and while getting the code from the git repository and create the image on AWS ECR?
i want to replace the my_sql user/pass that exists on the ejabberd.yml file with the environment variables been passed to the image while running the container.
The ejabberd.yml file is read and parsed by the yconf library (https://github.com/processone/yconf) , and I doubt it supports such a thing.
I went through some topics recommend using the ENTRY_POINT command to run a script that replaces the file before running the container but not sure if that's a good idea.
Following that recomendation, if you don't want to mess with the whole ejabberd.yml and let a script manipulate it, you can ensure that only those specific options are parametrized:
You can define those vars using a script in a small file, and then include options from that small file into ejabberd.yml using
https://docs.ejabberd.im/admin/configuration/file-format/#include-additional-files
For example, in your ejabberd.yml, put something like this:
include_config_file:
/etc/ejabberd/database.yml:
allow_only: [sql_server, sql_database, sql_username, sql_password, sql_port]
Then write your script, that generates that small file, for example:
$ generate-database-config.sh
$ cat /etc/ejabberd/database.yml
sql_server: "localhost"
sql_database: "ejaup"
sql_username: "ejabberd_test"
sql_password: "ejabberd_test"
sql_port: 3306
While setting up and configure some docker containers I asked myself how I could automatically edit some config files inside the container after the containerized service finished installing (since the config files are created at the installation).
I have tried that using a shell file and adding it as the entrypoint in the Dockerfile. However, as I have said the config file does not exist right at the beginning and hence the sed commands in the script fail.
Linking an config files with - ./myConfig.conf:/xy/myConfig.conf is also not an option because the config contains some installation dependent options.
The most reasonable solution I have found was running a script, which edits the config, manually after the installation has finished with docker exec -i mycontainer sh < editconfig.sh
EDIT
My question is formulated in general terms. However, the question arose while working with Nextcloud in a docker-compose setup similar to the official example. That container contains a config.php file which is the general config file of Nextcloud and is generated during the installation. Certain properties of that files have to be changed (there are only a very limited number of environmental variables to specify). Since I am conducting some tests with this container I have to repeatedly reinstall it and thus reedit the config file.
Maybe you can try another approach and have your config file/application pick its settings from the environmental variables. That would be consistent with the 12factor app methodology see here
How I understand your case you need to start your container from creating config by some template.
I see a number of options to do it:
Use some script that generates a config from template and arguments from a command line or environment variables. (Jinja2 and python for example or Mustache and node.js ). In this case, your entrypoint generate the template and after this start application. For change config, you will be forced restart service (container).
Run some service can save the configuration and render you configuration in run time. Personally, I like consul template, we active use this engine in our environment, and have no problems for while. In this case, config is more dynamic and able to be changed "on the fly". In your container, you will have two processes, application, and consul-template daemon. Obviously, you will need to run and maintain consul. For reloading config restart of an application process is enough.
Run a custom script to create the config. :)
I am pretty new to setting up remote servers, but I was playing around today and was hoping that I could leverage a Cloud Config file upon setup in order to set a few environment variables as the server spins up.
How can I set my environment variables programmatically when spinning up a machine on Digital Ocean? The key is that I want to automate the setup and avoid interactively defining these variables.
Thanks in advance.
This is what I did with for ubuntu
write_files:
- path: /etc/environment
content: |
FOO="BAR"
append: true
There's a couple ways to do this, although Cloud Init doesn't support a built-in resource type for environment variables.
Depending on your OS, use a write-files section to output the env vars you want to the appropriate file. For CoreOS, you'd do something like:
write_files:
- path: "/etc/profile.env"
append: true
content: |
export MY_VAR="foo"
For Ubuntu, use /etc/environment, or a user's profile, etc.
Another way to do it would be to leverage Cloud Init's support for Chef, and use that tool to set the variables when the profile is applied.
Do you need the environment variable to be permanent, or just for the execution of a single command/script?
If it's for a single command, you can do that:
FOO=${BAR} | sh ./your_script.sh