Define, build and modify container images

  • Note: The topic is part of the new CKAD syllabus. Here are a few examples of using podman to manage the life cycle of container images. The use of docker had been the industry standard for many years, but now large companies like Red Hat are moving to a new suite of open source tools: podman, skopeo and buildah. Also Kubernetes has moved in this direction. In particular, podman is meant to be the replacement of the docker command: so it makes sense to get familiar with it, although they are quite interchangeable considering that they use the same syntax.

Podman basics

Create a Dockerfile to deploy an Apache HTTP Server which hosts a custom main page

FROM docker.io/httpd:2.4
RUN echo "Hello, World!" > /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/index.html

Build and see how many layers the image consists of

:~$ podman build -t simpleapp .
STEP 1/2: FROM httpd:2.4
STEP 2/2: RUN echo "Hello, World!" > /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/index.html
COMMIT simpleapp
--> ef4b14a72d0
Successfully tagged localhost/simpleapp:latest
ef4b14a72d02ae0577eb0632d084c057777725c279e12ccf5b0c6e4ff5fd598b

:~$ podman images
REPOSITORY               TAG         IMAGE ID      CREATED        SIZE
localhost/simpleapp      latest      ef4b14a72d02  8 seconds ago  148 MB
docker.io/library/httpd  2.4         98f93cd0ec3b  7 days ago     148 MB

:~$ podman image tree localhost/simpleapp:latest
Image ID: ef4b14a72d02
Tags:     [localhost/simpleapp:latest]
Size:     147.8MB
Image Layers
├── ID: ad6562704f37 Size:  83.9MB
├── ID: c234616e1912 Size: 3.072kB
├── ID: c23a797b2d04 Size: 2.721MB
├── ID: ede2e092faf0 Size: 61.11MB
├── ID: 971c2cdf3872 Size: 3.584kB Top Layer of: [docker.io/library/httpd:2.4]
└── ID: 61644e82ef1f Size: 6.144kB Top Layer of: [localhost/simpleapp:latest]

Run the image locally, inspect its status and logs, finally test that it responds as expected

:~$ podman run -d --name test -p 8080:80 localhost/simpleapp
2f3d7d613ea6ba19703811d30704d4025123c7302ff6fa295affc9bd30e532f8

:~$ podman ps
CONTAINER ID  IMAGE                       COMMAND           CREATED        STATUS            PORTS                 NAMES
2f3d7d613ea6  localhost/simpleapp:latest  httpd-foreground  5 seconds ago  Up 6 seconds ago  0.0.0.0:8080->80/tcp  test

:~$ podman logs test
AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 10.0.2.100. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 10.0.2.100. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
[Sat Jun 04 16:15:38.071377 2022] [mpm_event:notice] [pid 1:tid 139756978220352] AH00489: Apache/2.4.53 (Unix) configured -- resuming normal operations
[Sat Jun 04 16:15:38.073570 2022] [core:notice] [pid 1:tid 139756978220352] AH00094: Command line: 'httpd -D FOREGROUND'

:~$ curl 0.0.0.0:8080
Hello, World!

Run a command inside the pod to print out the index.html file

:~$ podman exec -it test cat /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/index.html
Hello, World!

Tag the image with ip and port of a private local registry and then push the image to this registry

Note: Some small distributions of Kubernetes (such as microk8s) have a built-in registry you can use for this exercise. If this is not your case, you’ll have to setup it on your own.

:~$ podman tag localhost/simpleapp $registry_ip:5000/simpleapp

:~$ podman push $registry_ip:5000/simpleapp

Verify that the registry contains the pushed image and that you can pull it

:~$ curl http://$registry_ip:5000/v2/_catalog
{"repositories":["simpleapp"]}

# remove the image already present
:~$ podman rmi $registry_ip:5000/simpleapp

:~$ podman pull $registry_ip:5000/simpleapp
Trying to pull 10.152.183.13:5000/simpleapp:latest...
Getting image source signatures
Copying blob 643ea8c2c185 skipped: already exists
Copying blob 972107ece720 skipped: already exists
Copying blob 9857eeea6120 skipped: already exists
Copying blob 93859aa62dbd skipped: already exists
Copying blob 8e47efbf2b7e skipped: already exists
Copying blob 42e0f5a91e40 skipped: already exists
Copying config ef4b14a72d done
Writing manifest to image destination
Storing signatures
ef4b14a72d02ae0577eb0632d084c057777725c279e12ccf5b0c6e4ff5fd598b

Run a pod with the image pushed to the registry

:~$ kubectl run simpleapp --image=$registry_ip:5000/simpleapp --port=80

:~$ curl ${kubectl get pods simpleapp -o jsonpath='{.status.podIP}'}
Hello, World!

Log into a remote registry server and then read the credentials from the default file

Note: The two most used container registry servers with a free plan are DockerHub and Quay.io.

:~$ podman login --username $YOUR_USER --password $YOUR_PWD docker.io
:~$ cat ${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/containers/auth.json
{
        "auths": {
                "docker.io": {
                        "auth": "Z2l1bGl0JLSGtvbkxCcX1xb617251xh0x3zaUd4QW45Q3JuV3RDOTc="
                }
        }
}

Create a secret both from existing login credentials and from the CLI

:~$ kubectl create secret generic mysecret --from-file=.dockerconfigjson=${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/containers/auth.json --type=kubernetes.io/dockeconfigjson
secret/mysecret created
:~$ kubectl create secret docker-registry mysecret2 --docker-server=https://index.docker.io/v1/ --docker-username=$YOUR_USR --docker-password=$YOUR_PWD
secret/mysecret2 created

Create the manifest for a Pod that uses one of the two secrets just created to pull an image hosted on the relative private remote registry

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: private-reg
spec:
  containers:
  - name: private-reg-container
    image: $YOUR_PRIVATE_IMAGE
  imagePullSecrets:
  - name: mysecret

Clean up all the images and containers

:~$ podman rm --all --force
:~$ podman rmi --all
:~$ kubectl delete pod simpleapp
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