Developer Guide

Table of Contents

Image Design Overview

In this section we assume some prior knowledge of Docker and of how to write Dockerfiles. If you’d like to first on best practices for writing Dockerfiles, we recommend reviewing Docker’s best practices guide.

The Bootup Process

Upon startup, the entrypoint /etc/confluent/docker/run runs three executable scripts found in the /etc/confluent/docker. They are run in the following sequence:

/etc/confluent/docker/configure

/etc/confluent/docker/ensure

/etc/confluent/docker/launch

Configuration

The configure script does all the necessary configuration for each image. This includes the following:

• Creating all configuration files and copying them to their proper location
• Ensuring that mandatory configuration properties are present
• Handling service discovery (if required)

Preflight Checks

The ensure scripts makes sure that all the prerequisites for launching the service are in place. This includes:

• Ensure the configuration files are present and readable.
• Ensure that you can write/read to the data directory. The directories need to be world writable.
• Ensuring supporting services are in READY state. For example, ensure that ZK is ready before launching a Kafka broker.
• Ensure supporting systems are configured properly. For example, make sure all topics required for C3 are created with proper replication, security and partition settings.

Launching the Process

The launch script runs the actual process. The script should ensure that :

• The process is run with process id 1. Your script should use exec so the program takes over the shell process rather than running as a child process. This is so that your program will receive signals like SIGTERM directly rather than it’s parent shell process receiving them.
• Log to stdout

Development Guidelines

We adhered to the following guidelines when developing these Docker bootup scripts:

1. Make it Executable
2. Fail Fast
3. Fail with Good Error Messages
4. Return 0 if success, 1 if fail

Setup

1. Install Docker. Here we assume you are running on Mac OS X. For instructions on installing docker on Linux or Windows, please refer to the official Docker Machine documentation.

   brew install docker docker-machine
   

2. Create a Docker Machine:

docker-machine create --driver virtualbox --virtualbox-memory 6000 confluent

This command will create a local environment but it is recommended that you create one on AWS. The builds are much faster and more predictable (virtualbox stops when you close the lid of the laptop and sometimes gets into a weird state). When choosing an instance type, m4.large is good choice. It has 2 vCPUs with 8GB RAM and costs around ~$88 monthly.

export INSTANCE_NAME=$USER-docker-machine
docker-machine create \
   --driver amazonec2 \
   --amazonec2-region us-west-2 \
   --amazonec2-instance-type m4.large \
   --amazonec2-root-size 100 \
   --amazonec2-ami ami-16b1a077 \
   --amazonec2-tags Name,$INSTANCE_NAME \
   $USER-aws-confluent

3. Configure your terminal window to attach it to your new Docker Machine:

   eval $(docker-machine env confluent)
   

Building the Images

To get started, you can build all the CP images as follows:

make build-debian

You can run build tests by running make test-build. Use this when you want to test the builds with a clean slate. This deletes all images and starts from scratch.

Running Tests

You’ll need to first install virtualenv: pip install virtualenv

cd cp-docker-images
make test-zookeeper
make test-kafka

To run a single test, you can do so with Python. In the following example, we run only the ConfigTest found in test_zookeeper.py:

venv/bin/py.test tests/test_zookeeper.py::ConfigTest -v

Note

Deleting All Docker Containers: During the development process, you’ll often need to delete and rebuild the Docker images. You can do so by running docker rm -f $(docker ps -a -q).

Make Targets

Delete all images tagged with label=io.confluent.docker.testing=true :

clean-images

Delete all containers tagged with label=io.confluent.docker.build.number :

clean-containers

Tag images for the repository in DOCKER_REMOTE_REPOSITORY:

tag-remote

Push images to the private repository:

push-private

Push to the Docker hub:

push-public

Extending the Docker Images

You may want to extend the images to add new software, change the config management, use service discovery etc. This page provides instructions for doing so.

Prerequisites

1. Read the section on development to setup the development environment to build docker images.
2. Understand how the images are structured by reading the following docs:
   • image-structure describes the structure of the images
   • utility_scripts describes the utility scripts used in the images
3. If you plan to contribute back to the project, please be sure to review our guide on contributing.

Adding Connectors to the Kafka Connect Image

There are currently two ways to add new connectors to the Kafka Connect image.

• Build a new Docker image that has connector installed. You can follow example 2 in the documentation below. You will need to make sure that the connector jars are on the classpath.
• Add the connector jars via volumes. If you don’t want to create a new Docker image, please see our documentation on Configuring Kafka Connect with External Jars to configure the cp-kafka-connect container with external jars.

Examples

The following examples show to extend the images.

1. Download configuration from a URL

This example shows how to change the configuration management. You will need to override the configure script to download the scripts from an HTTP URL.

To do this for the Zookeeper image, you will need the following dockerfile and configure script. This example assumes that each property file is has a URL.

Dockerfile

FROM confluentinc/cp-zookeeper

COPY include/etc/confluent/docker/configure /etc/confluent/docker/configure

include/etc/confluent/docker/configure

set -o nounset \
    -o errexit \
    -o verbose \
    -o xtrace


# Ensure that URL locations are available.
dub ensure ZOOKEEPER_SERVER_CONFIG_URL
dub ensure ZOOKEEPER_SERVER_ID_URL
dub ensure ZOOKEEPER_LOG_CONFIG_URL

# Ensure that the config location is writable.
dub path /etc/kafka/ writable

curl -XGET ZOOKEEPER_SERVER_CONFIG_URL > /etc/kafka/zookeeper.properties
curl -XGET ZOOKEEPER_SERVER_ID_URL > /var/lib/zookeeper/data/myid
curl -XGET ZOOKEEPER_LOG_CONFIG_URL > /etc/kafka/log4j.properties

Build the image:

    docker build -t foo/zookeeper:latest .

Run it :

docker run \
     -e ZOOKEEPER_SERVER_CONFIG_URL=http://foo.com/zk1/server.properties \
     -e ZOOKEEPER_SERVER_ID_URL =http://foo.com/zk1/myid \
     -e ZOOKEEPER_LOG_CONFIG_URL =http://foo.com/zk1/log4j.properties \
     foo/zookeeper:latest

2. Add More Software

This example shows how to add new software to an image. For example, you might want to extend the Kafka Connect client to include the MySQL JDBC driver.

Dockerfile

FROM confluentinc/cp-kafka-connect

ENV MYSQL_DRIVER_VERSION 5.1.39

RUN curl -k -SL "https://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/Connector-J/mysql-connector-java-${MYSQL_DRIVER_VERSION}.tar.gz" \
    | tar -xzf - -C /usr/share/java/kafka/ --strip-components=1 mysql-connector-java-5.1.39/mysql-connector-java-${MYSQL_DRIVER_VERSION}-bin.jar

Build the image:

docker build -t foo/mysql-connect:latest .

This approach can also be used to create images with your own Kafka Connect Plugins.

3. Logging to volumes

The images only expose volumes for data and security configuration. But you might want to write to external storage for some use cases. For example: You might want to write the Kafka authorizer logs to a volume for auditing.

Dockerfile

FROM confluentinc/cp-kafka

# Make sure the log directory is world-writable
RUN echo "===> Creating authorizer logs dir ..." \
     && mkdir -p /var/log/kafka-auth-logs
     && chmod -R ag+w /var/log/kafka-auth-logs

VOLUME ["/var/lib/${COMPONENT}/data", "/etc/${COMPONENT}/secrets", "/var/log/kafka-auth-logs"]

COPY include/etc/confluent/log4j.properties.template /etc/confluent/log4j.properties.template

include/etc/confluent/log4j.properties.template

log4j.rootLogger={{ env["KAFKA_LOG4J_ROOT_LOGLEVEL"] | default('INFO') }}, stdout

log4j.appender.stdout=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.stdout.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.stdout.layout.ConversionPattern=[%d] %p %m (%c)%n

log4j.appender.authorizerAppender=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.authorizerAppender.DatePattern='.'yyyy-MM-dd-HH
log4j.appender.authorizerAppender.File=/var/log/kafka-auth-logs/kafka-authorizer.log
log4j.appender.authorizerAppender.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.authorizerAppender.layout.ConversionPattern=[%d] %p %m (%c)%n

log4j.additivity.kafka.authorizer.logger=false

{% set loggers = {
 'kafka': 'INFO',
 'kafka.network.RequestChannel$': 'WARN',
 'kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler': 'DEBUG',
 'kafka.request.logger': 'WARN',
 'kafka.controller': 'TRACE',
 'kafka.log.LogCleaner': 'INFO',
 'state.change.logger': 'TRACE',
 'kafka.authorizer.logger': 'WARN, authorizerAppender'
 } -%}


{% if env['KAFKA_LOG4J_LOGGERS'] %}
{% set loggers = parse_log4j_loggers(env['KAFKA_LOG4J_LOGGERS'], loggers) %}
{% endif %}

Build the image:

docker build -t foo/kafka-auditable:latest .

4. Writing heap and verbose GC logging to external volumes

You might want to log heap dumps and GC logs to an external volumes for debugging for the Kafka image.

Dockerfile

FROM confluentinc/cp-kafka

# Make sure the jvm log directory is world-writable
RUN echo "===> Creating jvm logs dir ..." \
     && mkdir -p /var/log/jvm-logs
     && chmod -R ag+w /var/log/jvm-logs

VOLUME ["/var/lib/${COMPONENT}/data", "/etc/${COMPONENT}/secrets", "/var/log/jvm-logs"]

Build the image:

docker build -t foo/kafka-verbose-jvm:latest .

Run it:

docker run \
    -e KAFKA_HEAP_OPTS="-Xmx256M -Xloggc:/var/log/jvm-logs/verbose-gc.log -verbose:gc -XX:+PrintGCDateStamps -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -XX:HeapDumpPath=/var/log/jvm-logs" \
    foo/kafka-verbose-jvm:latest

5. External Service discovery

You can extend the images to support for any service discovery mechanism either by overriding relevent properties or by overriding the configure script as explained in example 1.

The images support Mesos by overriding relevent proprties for Mesos service discovery. See debian/kafka-connect/includes/etc/confluent/docker/mesos-overrides for examples.

6. Use Oracle JDK

The images ship with Azul Zulu OpenJDK. Due to licensing restrictions, we cannot bundle Oracle JDK, but we are testing on Zulu OpenJDK and do suggest it as a viable alternative. In the event that you really need to use Oracle’s version, you can follow the steps below to modify the images to include Oracle JDK instead of Zulu OpenJDK.

1. Change the base image to install Oracle JDK instead of Zulu OpenJDK. First, you’ll need to update the base image Dockerfile:

FROM debian:jessie

ARG COMMIT_ID=unknown
LABEL io.confluent.docker.git.id=$COMMIT_ID
ARG BUILD_NUMBER=-1
LABEL io.confluent.docker.build.number=$BUILD_NUMBER

MAINTAINER [email protected]
LABEL io.confluent.docker=true


# Python
ENV PYTHON_VERSION="2.7.9-1"
ENV PYTHON_PIP_VERSION="8.1.2"

# Confluent
ENV SCALA_VERSION="2.11"
ENV CONFLUENT_MAJOR_VERSION="3.2"
ENV CONFLUENT_VERSION="3.2.1"
ENV CONFLUENT_DEB_VERSION="1"

# Zulu
ENV ZULU_OPENJDK_VERSION="8=8.15.0.1"


RUN echo "===> update debian ....." \
&& apt-get -qq update \
\
&& echo "===> install curl wget netcat python...." \
&& DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install -y \
            curl \
            wget \
            netcat \
            python=${PYTHON_VERSION} \
&& echo "===> install python packages ..."  \
&& curl -fSL 'https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py' | python \
&& pip install --no-cache-dir --upgrade pip==${PYTHON_PIP_VERSION} \
&& pip install --no-cache-dir jinja2 \
                              requests \
\
&& echo "===> add webupd8 repository ..."  \
&& echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu trusty main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/webupd8team-java.list \
&& echo "deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu trusty main" | tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/webupd8team-java.list \
&& apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys EEA14886 \
&& apt-get update \
\
&& echo "===> install Oracle Java 8 ..."   \
&& echo debconf shared/accepted-oracle-license-v1-1 select true | debconf-set-selections \
&& echo debconf shared/accepted-oracle-license-v1-1 seen true | debconf-set-selections \
&& DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive  apt-get install -y --force-yes \
                oracle-java8-installer \
                oracle-java8-set-default  \
                ca-certificates \
\
&& echo "===> clean up ..."  \
&& rm -rf /var/cache/oracle-jdk8-installer \
&& apt-get clean && rm -rf /tmp/* /var/lib/apt/lists/* \
\
\
&& echo "===> add confluent repository..." \
&& curl -SL http://packages.confluent.io/deb/${CONFLUENT_MAJOR_VERSION}/archive.key | apt-key add - \
&& echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://packages.confluent.io/deb/${CONFLUENT_MAJOR_VERSION} stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

COPY include/dub /usr/local/bin/dub
COPY include/cub /usr/local/bin/cub
COPY include/etc/confluent/docker /etc/confluent/docker

2. Next, rebuild all the images:

make build-debian

Utility Scripts

Given the dependencies between the various CP components (e.g. ZK required for Kafka, Kafka and ZK required for Schema Registry, etc.), it is sometimes necessary to be able to check the status of different services. The following utilities are used during the bootup sequence of the images and in the testing framework.

Docker Utility Belt (dub)

1. Template

usage: dub template [-h] input output

Generate template from env vars.

positional arguments:
  input       Path to template file.
  output      Path of output file.

2. ensure

usage: dub ensure [-h] name

Check if env var exists.

positional arguments:
  name        Name of env var.

3. wait

usage: dub wait [-h] host port timeout

wait for network service to appear.

positional arguments:
  host        Host.
  port        Host.
  timeout     timeout in secs.

4. path

usage: dub path [-h] path {writable,readable,executable,exists}

Check for path permissions and existence.

positional arguments:
  path                  Full path.
  {writable,readable,executable,exists} One of [writable, readable, executable, exists].

Confluent Platform Utility Belt (cub)

1. zk-ready

Used for checking if Zookeeper is ready.

usage: cub zk-ready [-h] connect_string timeout retries wait

Check if ZK is ready.

positional arguments:
  connect_string  Zookeeper connect string.
  timeout         Time in secs to wait for service to be ready.
  retries         No of retries to check if leader election is complete.
  wait            Time in secs between retries

2. kafka-ready

Used for checking if Kafka is ready.

usage: cub kafka-ready [-h] (-b BOOTSTRAP_BROKER_LIST | -z ZOOKEEPER_CONNECT)
                 [-c CONFIG] [-s SECURITY_PROTOCOL]
                 expected_brokers timeout

Check if Kafka is ready.

positional arguments:
expected_brokers      Minimum number of brokers to wait for
timeout               Time in secs to wait for service to be ready.

optional arguments:
-h, --help            show this help message and exit
-b BOOTSTRAP_BROKER_LIST, --bootstrap_broker_list BOOTSTRAP_BROKER_LIST
                      List of bootstrap brokers.
-z ZOOKEEPER_CONNECT, --zookeeper_connect ZOOKEEPER_CONNECT
                      Zookeeper connect string.
-c CONFIG, --config CONFIG
                      Path to config properties file (required when security
                      is enabled).
-s SECURITY_PROTOCOL, --security-protocol SECURITY_PROTOCOL
                      Security protocol to use when multiple listeners are
                      enabled.

3. sr-ready

Used for checking if the Schema Registry is ready. If you have multiple Schema Registry nodes, you may need to check their availability individually.

usage: cub sr-ready [-h] host port timeout

positional arguments:
  host  Hostname for Schema Registry.
  port     Port for Schema Registry.
  timeout   Time in secs to wait for service to be ready.

3. kr-ready

Used for checking if the REST Proxy is ready. If you have multiple REST Proxy nodes, you may need to check their availability individually.

usage: cub kr-ready [-h] host port timeout

positional arguments:
  host  Hostname for REST Proxy.
  port     Port for REST Proxy.
  timeout         Time in secs to wait for service to be ready.

Client Properties

The following properties may be configured when using the kafka-ready utility described above.

bootstrap.servers

A list of host/port pairs to use for establishing the initial connection to the Kafka cluster. The client will make use of all servers irrespective of which servers are specified here for bootstrapping&mdash;this list only impacts the initial hosts used to discover the full set of servers. This list should be in the form <code>host1:port1,host2:port2,...</code>. Since these servers are just used for the initial connection to discover the full cluster membership (which may change dynamically), this list need not contain the full set of servers (you may want more than one, though, in case a server is down).

• Type: list
• Default:
• Importance: high

ssl.key.password

The password of the private key in the key store file. This is optional for client.

• Type: password
• Importance: high

ssl.keystore.location

The location of the key store file. This is optional for client and can be used for two-way authentication for client.

• Type: string
• Importance: high

ssl.keystore.password

The store password for the key store file.This is optional for client and only needed if ssl.keystore.location is configured.

• Type: password
• Importance: high

ssl.truststore.location

The location of the trust store file.

• Type: string
• Importance: high

ssl.truststore.password

The password for the trust store file.

• Type: password
• Importance: high

sasl.kerberos.service.name

The Kerberos principal name that Kafka runs as. This can be defined either in Kafka’s JAAS config or in Kafka’s config.

• Type: string
• Importance: medium

sasl.mechanism

SASL mechanism used for client connections. This may be any mechanism for which a security provider is available. GSSAPI is the default mechanism.

• Type: string
• Default: “GSSAPI”
• Importance: medium

security.protocol

Protocol used to communicate with brokers. Valid values are: PLAINTEXT, SSL, SASL_PLAINTEXT, SASL_SSL.

• Type: string
• Default: “PLAINTEXT”
• Importance: medium

ssl.enabled.protocols

The list of protocols enabled for SSL connections.

• Type: list
• Default: [TLSv1.2, TLSv1.1, TLSv1]
• Importance: medium

ssl.keystore.type

The file format of the key store file. This is optional for client.

• Type: string
• Default: “JKS”
• Importance: medium

ssl.protocol

The SSL protocol used to generate the SSLContext. Default setting is TLS, which is fine for most cases. Allowed values in recent JVMs are TLS, TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.2. SSL, SSLv2 and SSLv3 may be supported in older JVMs, but their usage is discouraged due to known security vulnerabilities.

• Type: string
• Default: “TLS”
• Importance: medium

ssl.provider

The name of the security provider used for SSL connections. Default value is the default security provider of the JVM.

• Type: string
• Importance: medium

ssl.truststore.type

The file format of the trust store file.

• Type: string
• Default: “JKS”
• Importance: medium

sasl.kerberos.kinit.cmd

Kerberos kinit command path.

• Type: string
• Default: “/usr/bin/kinit”
• Importance: low

sasl.kerberos.min.time.before.relogin

Login thread sleep time between refresh attempts.

• Type: long
• Default: 60000
• Importance: low

sasl.kerberos.ticket.renew.jitter

Percentage of random jitter added to the renewal time.

• Type: double
• Default: 0.05
• Importance: low

sasl.kerberos.ticket.renew.window.factor

Login thread will sleep until the specified window factor of time from last refresh to ticket’s expiry has been reached, at which time it will try to renew the ticket.

• Type: double
• Default: 0.8
• Importance: low

ssl.cipher.suites

A list of cipher suites. This is a named combination of authentication, encryption, MAC and key exchange algorithm used to negotiate the security settings for a network connection using TLS or SSL network protocol.By default all the available cipher suites are supported.

• Type: list
• Importance: low

ssl.endpoint.identification.algorithm

The endpoint identification algorithm to validate server hostname using server certificate.

• Type: string
• Importance: low

ssl.keymanager.algorithm

The algorithm used by key manager factory for SSL connections. Default value is the key manager factory algorithm configured for the Java Virtual Machine.

• Type: string
• Default: “SunX509”
• Importance: low

ssl.trustmanager.algorithm

The algorithm used by trust manager factory for SSL connections. Default value is the trust manager factory algorithm configured for the Java Virtual Machine.

• Type: string
• Default: “PKIX”
• Importance: low

References

• Docker’s example for setting up a Dockerized AWS EC2 instance.