How can I include files from outside of Docker's build context using the "ADD" command in the Docker file?
From the Docker documentation:
The path must be inside the context of the build; you cannot ADD
../something/something, because the first step of a docker build is to
send the context directory (and subdirectories) to the docker daemon.
I do not want to restructure my whole project just to accommodate Docker in this matter. I want to keep all my Docker files in the same sub-directory.
Also, it appears Docker does not yet (and may not ever) support symlinks: Dockerfile ADD command does not follow symlinks on host #1676.
The only other thing I can think of is to include a pre-build step to copy the files into the Docker build context (and configure my version control to ignore those files). Is there a better workaround for than that?
The best way to work around this is to specify the Dockerfile independently of the build context, using -f.
For instance, this command will give the ADD command access to anything in your current directory.
docker build -f docker-files/Dockerfile .
Update: Docker now allows having the Dockerfile outside the build context (fixed in 18.03.0-ce). So you can also do something like
docker build -f ../Dockerfile .
I often find myself utilizing the --build-arg option for this purpose. For example after putting the following in the Dockerfile:
ARG SSH_KEY
RUN echo "$SSH_KEY" > /root/.ssh/id_rsa
You can just do:
docker build -t some-app --build-arg SSH_KEY="$(cat ~/file/outside/build/context/id_rsa)" .
But note the following warning from the Docker documentation:
Warning: It is not recommended to use build-time variables for passing secrets like github keys, user credentials etc. Build-time variable values are visible to any user of the image with the docker history command.
I spent a good time trying to figure out a good pattern and how to better explain what's going on with this feature support. I realized that the best way to explain it was as follows...
Dockerfile: Will only see files under its own relative path
Context: a place in "space" where the files you want to share and your Dockerfile will be copied to
So, with that said, here's an example of the Dockerfile that needs to reuse a file called start.sh
Dockerfile
It will always load from its relative path, having the current directory of itself as the local reference to the paths you specify.
COPY start.sh /runtime/start.sh
Files
Considering this idea, we can think of having multiple copies for the Dockerfiles building specific things, but they all need access to the start.sh.
./all-services/
/start.sh
/service-X/Dockerfile
/service-Y/Dockerfile
/service-Z/Dockerfile
./docker-compose.yaml
Considering this structure and the files above, here's a docker-compose.yml
docker-compose.yaml
In this example, your shared context directory is the runtime directory.
Same mental model here, think that all the files under this directory are moved over to the so-called context.
Similarly, just specify the Dockerfile that you want to copy to that same directory. You can specify that using dockerfile.
The directory where your main content is located is the actual context to be set.
The docker-compose.yml is as follows
version: "3.3"
services:
service-A
build:
context: ./all-service
dockerfile: ./service-A/Dockerfile
service-B
build:
context: ./all-service
dockerfile: ./service-B/Dockerfile
service-C
build:
context: ./all-service
dockerfile: ./service-C/Dockerfile
all-service is set as the context, the shared file start.sh is copied there as well the Dockerfile specified by each dockerfile.
Each gets to be built their own way, sharing the start file!
On Linux you can mount other directories instead of symlinking them
mount --bind olddir newdir
See https://superuser.com/questions/842642 for more details.
I don't know if something similar is available for other OSes.
I also tried using Samba to share a folder and remount it into the Docker context which worked as well.
If you read the discussion in the issue 2745 not only docker may never support symlinks they may never support adding files outside your context. Seems to be a design philosophy that files that go into docker build should explicitly be part of its context or be from a URL where it is presumably deployed too with a fixed version so that the build is repeatable with well known URLs or files shipped with the docker container.
I prefer to build from a version controlled source - ie docker build
-t stuff http://my.git.org/repo - otherwise I'm building from some random place with random files.
fundamentally, no.... -- SvenDowideit, Docker Inc
Just my opinion but I think you should restructure to separate out the code and docker repositories. That way the containers can be generic and pull in any version of the code at run time rather than build time.
Alternatively, use docker as your fundamental code deployment artifact and then you put the dockerfile in the root of the code repository. if you go this route probably makes sense to have a parent docker container for more general system level details and a child container for setup specific to your code.
I believe the simpler workaround would be to change the 'context' itself.
So, for example, instead of giving:
docker build -t hello-demo-app .
which sets the current directory as the context, let's say you wanted the parent directory as the context, just use:
docker build -t hello-demo-app ..
You can also create a tarball of what the image needs first and use that as your context.
https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/build/#/tarball-contexts
This behavior is given by the context directory that the docker or podman uses to present the files to the build process.
A nice trick here is by changing the context dir during the building instruction to the full path of the directory, that you want to expose to the daemon.
e.g:
docker build -t imageName:tag -f /path/to/the/Dockerfile /mysrc/path
using /mysrc/path instead of .(current directory), you'll be using that directory as a context, so any files under it can be seen by the build process.
This example you'll be exposing the entire /mysrc/path tree to the docker daemon.
When using this with docker the user ID who triggered the build must have recursively read permissions to any single directory or file from the context dir.
This can be useful in cases where you have the /home/user/myCoolProject/Dockerfile but want to bring to this container build context, files that aren't in the same directory.
Here is an example of building using context dir, but this time using podman instead of docker.
Lets take as example, having inside your Dockerfile a COPY or ADDinstruction which is copying files from a directory outside of your project, like:
FROM myImage:tag
...
...
COPY /opt/externalFile ./
ADD /home/user/AnotherProject/anotherExternalFile ./
...
In order to build this, with a container file located in the /home/user/myCoolProject/Dockerfile, just do something like:
cd /home/user/myCoolProject
podman build -t imageName:tag -f Dockefile /
Some known use cases to change the context dir, is when using a container as a toolchain for building your souce code.
e.g:
podman build --platform linux/s390x -t myimage:mytag -f ./Dockerfile /tmp/mysrc
or it can be a path relative, like:
podman build --platform linux/s390x -t myimage:mytag -f ./Dockerfile ../../
Another example using this time a global path:
FROM myImage:tag
...
...
COPY externalFile ./
ADD AnotherProject ./
...
Notice that now the full global path for the COPY and ADD is omitted in the Dockerfile command layers.
In this case the contex dir must be relative to where the files are, if both externalFile and AnotherProject are in /opt directory then the context dir for building it must be:
podman build -t imageName:tag -f ./Dockerfile /opt
Note when using COPY or ADD with context dir in docker:
The docker daemon will try to "stream" all the files visible on the context dir tree to the daemon, which can slowdown the build. And requires the user to have recursively permission from the context dir.
This behavior can be more costly specially when using the build through the API. However,with podman the build happens instantaneously, without needing recursively permissions, that's because podman does not enumerate the entire context dir, and doesn't use a client/server architecture as well.
The build for such cases can be way more interesting to use podman instead of docker, when you face such issues using a different context dir.
Some references:
https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/build/
https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-build.1.html
As is described in this GitHub issue the build actually happens in /tmp/docker-12345, so a relative path like ../relative-add/some-file is relative to /tmp/docker-12345. It would thus search for /tmp/relative-add/some-file, which is also shown in the error message.*
It is not allowed to include files from outside the build directory, so this results in the "Forbidden path" message."
Using docker-compose, I accomplished this by creating a service that mounts the volumes that I need and committing the image of the container. Then, in the subsequent service, I rely on the previously committed image, which has all of the data stored at mounted locations. You will then have have to copy these files to their ultimate destination, as host mounted directories do not get committed when running a docker commit command
You don't have to use docker-compose to accomplish this, but it makes life a bit easier
# docker-compose.yml
version: '3'
services:
stage:
image: alpine
volumes:
- /host/machine/path:/tmp/container/path
command: bash -c "cp -r /tmp/container/path /final/container/path"
setup:
image: stage
# setup.sh
# Start "stage" service
docker-compose up stage
# Commit changes to an image named "stage"
docker commit $(docker-compose ps -q stage) stage
# Start setup service off of stage image
docker-compose up setup
Create a wrapper docker build shell script that grabs the file then calls docker build then removes the file.
a simple solution not mentioned anywhere here from my quick skim:
have a wrapper script called docker_build.sh
have it create tarballs, copy large files to the current working directory
call docker build
clean up the tarballs, large files, etc
this solution is good because (1.) it doesn't have the security hole from copying in your SSH private key (2.) another solution uses sudo bind so that has another security hole there because it requires root permission to do bind.
I think as of earlier this year a feature was added in buildx to do just this.
If you have dockerfile 1.4+ and buildx 0.8+ you can do something like this
docker buildx build --build-context othersource= ../something/something .
Then in your docker file you can use the from command to add the context
ADD –from=othersource . /stuff
See this related post https://www.docker.com/blog/dockerfiles-now-support-multiple-build-contexts/
Workaround with links:
ln path/to/file/outside/context/file_to_copy ./file_to_copy
On Dockerfile, simply:
COPY file_to_copy /path/to/file
I was personally confused by some answers, so decided to explain it simply.
You should pass the context, you have specified in Dockerfile, to docker when
want to create image.
I always select root of project as the context in Dockerfile.
so for example if you use COPY command like COPY . .
first dot(.) is the context and second dot(.) is container working directory
Assuming the context is project root, dot(.) , and code structure is like this
sample-project/
docker/
Dockerfile
If you want to build image
and your path (the path you run the docker build command) is /full-path/sample-project/,
you should do this
docker build -f docker/Dockerfile .
and if your path is /full-path/sample-project/docker/,
you should do this
docker build -f Dockerfile ../
An easy workaround might be to simply mount the volume (using the -v or --mount flag) to the container when you run it and access the files that way.
example:
docker run -v /path/to/file/on/host:/desired/path/to/file/in/container/ image_name
for more see: https://docs.docker.com/storage/volumes/
I had this same issue with a project and some data files that I wasn't able to move inside the repo context for HIPAA reasons. I ended up using 2 Dockerfiles. One builds the main application without the stuff I needed outside the container and publishes that to internal repo. Then a second dockerfile pulls that image and adds the data and creates a new image which is then deployed and never stored anywhere. Not ideal, but it worked for my purposes of keeping sensitive information out of the repo.
In my case, my Dockerfile is written like a template containing placeholders which I'm replacing with real value using my configuration file.
So I couldn't specify this file directly but pipe it into the docker build like this:
sed "s/%email_address%/$EMAIL_ADDRESS/;" ./Dockerfile | docker build -t katzda/bookings:latest . -f -;
But because of the pipe, the COPY command didn't work. But the above way solves it by -f - (explicitly saying file not provided). Doing only - without the -f flag, the context AND the Dockerfile are not provided which is a caveat.
How to share typescript code between two Dockerfiles
I had this same problem, but for sharing files between two typescript projects. Some of the other answers didn't work for me because I needed to preserve the relative import paths between the shared code. I solved it by organizing my code like this:
api/
Dockerfile
src/
models/
index.ts
frontend/
Dockerfile
src/
models/
index.ts
shared/
model1.ts
model2.ts
index.ts
.dockerignore
Note: After extracting the shared code into that top folder, I avoided needing to update the import paths because I updated api/models/index.ts and frontend/models/index.ts to export from shared: (eg export * from '../../../shared)
Since the build context is now one directory higher, I had to make a few additional changes:
Update the build command to use the new context:
docker build -f Dockerfile .. (two dots instead of one)
Use a single .dockerignore at the top level to exclude all node_modules. (eg **/node_modules/**)
Prefix the Dockerfile COPY commands with api/ or frontend/
Copy shared (in addition to api/src or frontend/src)
WORKDIR /usr/src/app
COPY api/package*.json ./ <---- Prefix with api/
RUN npm ci
COPY api/src api/ts*.json ./ <---- Prefix with api/
COPY shared usr/src/shared <---- ADDED
RUN npm run build
This was the easiest way I could send everything to docker, while preserving the relative import paths in both projects. The tricky (annoying) part was all the changes/consequences caused by the build context being up one directory.
One quick and dirty way is to set the build context up as many levels as you need - but this can have consequences.
If you're working in a microservices architecture that looks like this:
./Code/Repo1
./Code/Repo2
...
You can set the build context to the parent Code directory and then access everything, but it turns out that with a large number of repositories, this can result in the build taking a long time.
An example situation could be that another team maintains a database schema in Repo1 and your team's code in Repo2 depends on this. You want to dockerise this dependency with some of your own seed data without worrying about schema changes or polluting the other team's repository (depending on what the changes are you may still have to change your seed data scripts of course)
The second approach is hacky but gets around the issue of long builds:
Create a sh (or ps1) script in ./Code/Repo2 to copy the files you need and invoke the docker commands you want, for example:
#!/bin/bash
rm -r ./db/schema
mkdir ./db/schema
cp -r ../Repo1/db/schema ./db/schema
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml down
docker container prune -f
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up --build
In the docker-compose file, simply set the context as Repo2 root and use the content of the ./db/schema directory in your dockerfile without worrying about the path.
Bear in mind that you will run the risk of accidentally committing this directory to source control, but scripting cleanup actions should be easy enough.
I am setting up an automated Travis CI CI, and was wondering if it is possible to launch two jobs (same tests) with two different configurations.
My app depends on a config.json file, which sets up different DB usages (json and mongo). My use case is simple: run the tests with a config file using json and run the same tests using another config file with mongo.
To retrieve config I'm running a before script which just gets it from somewhere and saves the file.
Thanks!
My solution for this is quite simple, depending on the configuration (in this case env variables), I run specific scripts that download different configurations for each env variable.
before_script:
- sh -c "if [ '$DB' = 'mongo' ]; then sleep 15; fi"
- sh -c "if [ '$DB' = 'mongo' ]; then wget https://google.com/config.json; fi"
- sh -c "if [ '$DB' = 'mysql' ]; then wget https://google.com/config2.json; fi"
That way when the code runs, you can load different configurations
How to keep golang project running even if console (putty) is closed. I have REST API developed in golang and hosted on AWS and using putty to connect and run the project
following command are used to install and run the project ( myapi )
go install myapi
myapi
when I close putty it stops working.
You have a number of options to keep your process running. The easiest of which is to use the nohup command.
$ nohup myapi &
The above command should run your application and print the output to a file called nohup.out. This file will be located in the directory where you run the command. Another option is to use screen or tmux.
If you want to start running your project in a more production ready way, you should look into service managers like systemd.
You can use something like supervisord
Run your program as a non-privileged user and use the setcap utility to grant it the needed permissions.
For example, to allow binding to a low port number (like 80) run will need to run setcap once on the executable:
sudo setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' /opt/yourGoBinary
You may need to install setcap: sudo aptitude install libcap2-bin
Alternatively
Debian comes with a tool called start-stop-daemon which is a standard way for starting daemons in init.d scripts. It can also also put the process in background for you if the program does not do it on its own. Have a look at the --background option.
Use /etc/init.d/skeleton as the basis of your init script, but change the do_start() function as follows:
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --make-pidfile \
--background --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
|| return 1
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --make-pidfile \
--background --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_ARGS \
|| return 2
Also above added the --make-pidfile option which creates the PID file for you.
In case you need to switch to a different user in a secure way, there is also --chuid option.
On Ubuntu and RHEL/CentOS/SL 6.X the simplest way is to write an upstart job configuration file. Just put exec /usr/sbin/yourprogram in the /etc/init/yourprogram.conf configuration file. With upstart there is no need to force the program in background. Do not add expect fork or expect daemon which you need with traditional daemons. With upstart it is better if the process does not fork.
I have two elastic-beanstalk environments on AWS: development and production. I'm running a glassfish server on each instance and it is requested that the same application package be deployable in production and in development environment, without requiring two different .EAR files.The two instance differ in size: the dev has a micro instance while the production has a medium instance, therefore I need to deploy two different configuration files for glassfish, one for each environment.
The main problem is that the file has to be in the glassfish config directory before the server starts, therefore I thought it could be better moving it while the container was created.
Of course each environment uses a docker container to host the glassfish instance, so my first thought was to configure an environment variable for the elastic-beanstalk. In this case
ypenvironment = dev
for the development environment and
ypenvironment = pro
for the production environment. Then in my DOCKERFILE I put this statement in the RUN command:
RUN if [ "$ypenvironment"="pro" ] ; then \
mv --force /var/app/GF_domain.xml /usr/local/glassfish/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/domain.xml ; \
elif [ "$ypenvironment"="dev" ] ; then \
mv --force /var/app/GF_domain.xml.dev /usr/local/glassfish/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/domain.xml ; \
fi
unfortunately, when the startup finishes, both GF_domain files are still in var/app.
Then I red that the RUN command runs things BEFORE the container is fully loaded, maybe missing the elastic-beanstalk-injected variables. So I tried to move the code to the ENTRYPOINT directive. No luck again, the container startup fails. Also tried the
ENTRYPOINT ["command", "param"]
syntax, but it didn't work giving a
System error: exec: "if": executable file not found in $PATH
Thus I'm stuck.
You need:
1/ Not to use entrypoint (or at least use a sh -c 'if...' syntax): that is for runtime execution, not compile-time image build.
2/ to use build-time variables (--build-arg):
You can use ENV instructions in a Dockerfile to define variable values. These values persist in the built image.
However, often persistence is not what you want. Users want to specify variables differently depending on which host they build an image on.
A good example is http_proxy or source versions for pulling intermediate files. The ARG instruction lets Dockerfile authors define values that users can set at build-time using the --build-arg flag:
$ docker build --build-arg HTTP_PROXY=http://10.20.30.2:1234 .
In your case, your Dockefile should include:
ENV ypenvironment
Then docker build --build-arg ypenvironment=dev ... myDevImage
You will build 2 different images (based on the same Dockerfile)
I need to be able to use the same EAR package for dev and pro environments,
Then you want your ENTRYPOINT, when run, to move a file depending on the value of an environment variable.
Your Dockerfile still needs to include:
ENV ypenvironment
But you need to run your one image with
docker run -x ypenvironment=dev ...
Make sure your script (referenced by your entrypoint) includes the if [ "$ypenvironment"="pro" ] ; then... you mention in your question, plus the actual launch (in foreground) of your app.
Your script needs to not exit right away, or your container would switch to exit status right after having started.
When working with Docker you must differentiate between build-time actions and run-time actions.
Dockerfiles are used for building Docker images, not for deploying containers. This means that all the commands in the Dockerfile are executed when you build the Docker image, not when you deploy a container from it.
The CMD and ENTRYPOINT commands are special build-time commands which tell Docker what command to execute when a container is deployed from that image.
Now, in your case a better approach would be to check if Glassfish supports environment variables inside domain.xml (or somewhere else). If it does, you can use the same domain.xml file for both environments, and have the same Docker image for both of them. You then differentiate between the environments by injecting run-time environment variables to the containers by using docker run -e "VAR=value" when running locally, and by using the Environment Properties configuration section when deploying on Elastic Beanstalk.
Edit: In case you can't use environment variables inside domain.xml, you can solve the problem by starting the container with a script which reads the runtime environment variables and puts their values in the correct places in domain.xml using sed, then starts your application as usual. You can find an example in this post.