What is the (best) way to manage permissions for D

Question

I've been playing around with Docker for a while and keep on finding the same issue when dealing with persistent data.

I create my Dockerfile and expose a volume or use --volumes-from to mount a host folder inside my container.

What permissions should I apply to the shared volume on the host?

I can think of two options:

• So far I've given everyone read/write access, so I can write to the folder from the Docker container.

• Map the users from host into the container, so I can assign more granular permissions. Not sure this is possible though and haven't found much about it. So far, all I can do is run the container as some user: docker run -i -t -user="myuser" postgres, but this user has a different UID than my host myuser, so permissions do not work. Also, I'm unsure if mapping the users will pose some security risks.

Are there other alternatives?

How are you guys/gals dealing with this issue?

Answer 1

UPDATE 2016-03-02: As of Docker 1.9.0, Docker has named volumes which replace data-only containers. The answer below, as well as my linked blog post, still has value in the sense of how to think about data inside docker but consider using named volumes to implement the pattern described below rather than data containers.

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I believe the canonical way to solve this is by using data-only containers. With this approach, all access to the volume data is via containers that use -volumes-from the data container, so the host uid/gid doesn't matter.

For example, one use case given in the documentation is backing up a data volume. To do this another container is used to do the backup via tar, and it too uses -volumes-from in order to mount the volume. So I think the key point to grok is: rather than thinking about how to get access to the data on the host with the proper permissions, think about how to do whatever you need -- backups, browsing, etc. -- via another container. The containers themselves need to use consistent uid/gids, but they don't need to map to anything on the host, thereby remaining portable.

This is relatively new for me as well but if you have a particular use case feel free to comment and I'll try to expand on the answer.

UPDATE: For the given use case in the comments, you might have an image some/graphite to run graphite, and an image some/graphitedata as the data container. So, ignoring ports and such, the Dockerfile of image some/graphitedata is something like:

FROM debian:jessie
# add our user and group first to make sure their IDs get assigned consistently, regardless of other deps added later
RUN groupadd -r graphite \
  && useradd -r -g graphite graphite
RUN mkdir -p /data/graphite \
  && chown -R graphite:graphite /data/graphite
VOLUME /data/graphite
USER graphite
CMD ["echo", "Data container for graphite"]

Build and create the data container:

docker build -t some/graphitedata Dockerfile
docker run --name graphitedata some/graphitedata

The some/graphite Dockerfile should also get the same uid/gids, therefore it might look something like this:

FROM debian:jessie
# add our user and group first to make sure their IDs get assigned consistently, regardless of other deps added later
RUN groupadd -r graphite \
  && useradd -r -g graphite graphite
# ... graphite installation ...
VOLUME /data/graphite
USER graphite
CMD ["/bin/graphite"]

And it would be run as follows:

docker run --volumes-from=graphitedata some/graphite

Ok, now that gives us our graphite container and associated data-only container with the correct user/group (note you could re-use the some/graphite container for the data container as well, overriding the entrypoing/cmd when running it, but having them as separate images IMO is clearer).

Now, lets say you want to edit something in the data folder. So rather than bind mounting the volume to the host and editing it there, create a new container to do that job. Lets call it some/graphitetools. Lets also create the appropriate user/group, just like the some/graphite image.

FROM debian:jessie
# add our user and group first to make sure their IDs get assigned consistently, regardless of other deps added later
RUN groupadd -r graphite \
  && useradd -r -g graphite graphite
VOLUME /data/graphite
USER graphite
CMD ["/bin/bash"]

You could make this DRY by inheriting from some/graphite or some/graphitedata in the Dockerfile, or instead of creating a new image just re-use one of the existing ones (overriding entrypoint/cmd as necessary).

Now, you simply run:

docker run -ti --rm --volumes-from=graphitedata some/graphitetools

and then vi /data/graphite/whatever.txt. This works perfectly because all the containers have the same graphite user with matching uid/gid.

Since you never mount /data/graphite from the host, you don't care how the host uid/gid maps to the uid/gid defined inside the graphite and graphitetools containers. Those containers can now be deployed to any host, and they will continue to work perfectly.

The neat thing about this is that graphitetools could have all sorts of useful utilities and scripts, that you can now also deploy in a portable manner.

UPDATE 2: After writing this answer, I decided to write a more complete blog post about this approach. I hope it helps.

UPDATE 3: I corrected this answer and added more specifics. It previously contained some incorrect assumptions about ownership and perms -- the ownership is usually assigned at volume creation time i.e. in the data container, because that is when the volume is created. See this blog. This is not a requirement though -- you can just use the data container as a "reference/handle" and set the ownership/perms in another container via chown in an entrypoint, which ends with gosu to run the command as the correct user. If anyone is interested in this approach, please comment and I can provide links to a sample using this approach.

Answer 2

The same as you, I was looking for a way to map users/groups from host to docker containers and this is the shortest way I've found so far:

  version: "3"
    services:
      my-service:
        .....
        volumes:
          # take uid/gid lists from host
          - /etc/passwd:/etc/passwd:ro
          - /etc/group:/etc/group:ro
          # mount config folder
          - path-to-my-configs/my-service:/etc/my-service:ro
        .....

This is an extract from my docker-compose.yml.

The idea is to mount (in read-only mode) users/groups lists from the host to the container thus after the container starts up it will have the same uid->username (as well as for groups) matchings with the host. Now you can configure user/group settings for your service inside the container as if it was working on your host system.

When you decide to move your container to another host you just need to change user name in service config file to what you have on that host.

Answer 3

In my specific case, I was trying to build my node package with the node docker image so that I wouldn't have to install npm on the deployment server. It worked well until, outside out the container and on the host machine, I tried to move a file into the node_modules directory that the node docker image had created, to which I was denied permissions because it was owned by root. I realized that I could work around this by copying the directory out of the container onto the host machine. Via docker docs...

Files copied to the local machine are created with the UID:GID of the user which invoked the docker cp command.

This is the bash code I used to change ownership of the directory created by and within the docker container.

NODE_IMAGE=node_builder
docker run -v $(pwd)/build:/build -w="/build" --name $NODE_IMAGE node:6-slim npm i --production
# node_modules is owned by root, so we need to copy it out 
docker cp $NODE_IMAGE:/build/node_modules build/lambda 
# you might have issues trying to remove the directory "node_modules" within the shared volume "build", because it is owned by root, so remove the image and its volumes
docker rm -vf $NODE_IMAGE || true

If needed, you can remove the directory with a second docker container.

docker run -v $(pwd)/build:/build -w="/build" --name $RMR_IMAGE node:6-slim rm -r node_modules

Answer 4

My approach is to detect current UID/GID and then create such user/group inside the container and execute the script under him, so then all files he will create will match the user who run the script:

# get location of this script no matter what your current folder is, this might break between shells so make sure you run bash
LOCAL_DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"

# get current IDs
USER_ID=$(id -u)
GROUP_ID=$(id -g)

echo "Mount $LOCAL_DIR into docker, and match the host IDs ($USER_ID:$GROUP_ID) inside the container."

docker run -v $LOCAL_DIR:/host_mount -i debian:9.4-slim bash -c "set -euo pipefail && groupadd -r -g $GROUP_ID lowprivgroup && useradd -u $USER_ID lowprivuser -g $GROUP_ID && cd /host_mount && su -c ./runMyScriptAsRegularUser.sh lowprivuser"

Answer 5

Ok, this is now being tracked at docker issue #7198

For now, I'm dealing with this using your second option:

Map the users from host into the container

Dockerfile

#=======
# Users
#=======
# TODO: Idk how to fix hardcoding uid & gid, specifics to docker host machine
RUN (adduser --system --uid=1000 --gid=1000 \
        --home /home/myguestuser --shell /bin/bash myguestuser)

CLI

# DIR_HOST and DIR_GUEST belongs to uid:gid 1000:1000
docker run -d -v ${DIR_HOST}:${DIR_GUEST} elgalu/myservice:latest

UPDATE I'm currently more inclined to Hamy answer

Answer 6

If you using Docker Compose, start the container in previleged mode:

wordpress:
    image: wordpress:4.5.3
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8084:80
    privileged: true