Image Overview: vault-k8s

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Vault Server Image

Get It!

The image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/chainguard/vault:latest

Using Vault

The Chainguard Vault image contains the Vault server binary and supporting config. The image is intended to be a drop-in replacement for the upstream hashicorp/vault or vault images and compatible with the Hashicorp Helm chart.

The default entrypoint starts a single-node instance of the server in development mode for testing and development. Note that the container should be given the IPC_LOCK capability.

You can start the container with:

$ docker run --cap-add IPC_LOCK cgr.dev/chainguard/vault
==> Vault server configuration:

             Api Address: http://0.0.0.0:8200
                     Cgo: disabled
         Cluster Address: https://0.0.0.0:8201
   Environment Variables: GODEBUG, HOME, HOSTNAME, PATH, PWD, SHLVL, SSL_CERT_FILE
              Go Version: go1.20.4
              Listener 1: tcp (addr: "0.0.0.0:8200", cluster address: "0.0.0.0:8201", max_request_duration: "1m30s", max_request_size: "33554432", tls: "disabled")
               Log Level:
                   Mlock: supported: true, enabled: false
           Recovery Mode: false
                 Storage: inmem
                 Version: Vault v1.13.2

==> Vault server started! Log data will stream in below:
...

To configure Vault for production or other environments, supply a configuration file in the /etc/vault directory e.g:

$ docker run -v $PWD/vault.hcl:/etc/vault/vault.hcl cgr.dev/chainguard/vault server

You can also supply config via the VAULT_LOCAL_CONFIG variable e.g:

$ docker run --cap-add=IPC_LOCK -e 'VAULT_LOCAL_CONFIG={"storage": {"file": {"path": "/var/lib/vault"}}, "listener": [{"tcp": { "address": "0.0.0.0:8200", "tls_disable": true}}], "default_lease_ttl": "168h", "max_lease_ttl": "720h", "ui": true}' -p 8200:8200 cgr.dev/chainguard/vault server

Helm Chart Usage

This image and the vault-k8s image can be used with the Hashicorp Helm chart. To replace the official images with the Chainguard images, provide the chart with the following values:

injector:
  image:
    repository: "cgr.dev/chainguard/vault-k8s"
    tag: "latest"

  agentImage:
    repository: "cgr.dev/chainguard/vault"
    tag: "latest"

server:
  image:
    repository: "cgr.dev/chainguard/vault"
    tag: "latest"

Assuming these values are saved in cgr_values.yaml, you should be able to run:

$ helm repo add hashicorp https://helm.releases.hashicorp.com
$ helm install vault hashicorp/vault --values cgr_values.yaml

IPC_LOCK Capability

If you run the container without IPC_LOCK capabilitiy, you will get the following warning:

Couldn't start vault with IPC_LOCK. Disabling IPC_LOCK, please use --cap-add IPC_LOCK
==> Vault server configuration:
...

IPC_LOCK is required for the memory lock (mlock) feature that prevents memory – possibly containing sensitive information – being written to disk. For a full explanation of how it works, refer to the documentation.

The error can be easily fixed by running:

$ docker run --cap-add IPC_LOCK cgr.dev/chainguard/vault

Or by using the following securityContext in Kubernetes:

securityContext:
    runAsNonRoot: true
    runAsUser: 65532
    capabilities:
      add: ["IPC_LOCK"]

User

The image starts as root and switches to the lower privileged vault user in the entrypoint script.

Differences to hashicorp/vault image

This image is not identical to the hashicorp/vault image. In particular:

• The directory for configuration files is /etc/vault
• The directory for filesystem driver (not used by default) is /var/lib/vault
• The directory for logs (not used by default) is /var/log/vault
• The vault binary and entrypoint script are stored in /usr/bin
• The underlying OS is Wolfi (which is glibc based) whereas the Hashicorp image uses Alpine (which is musl based)

This image supports the same environment variables as the hashicorp/vault image.

Persisting Storage Data

If using the file data storage plugin, please configure it to write to /var/lib/vault.

Persisting Logs

By default logs will be streamed to stdout and stderr, but can be configured to write to /var/log/vault.