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Under some conditions, you may find that your Docker in Docker builds will hang our stall out, especially when you combine DIND based builds and Kubernetes. The fix for this isn’t always obvious because it doesn’t exactly announce itself. After a bit of searching, I came across a post that described the issue in great detail located at https://medium.com/@liejuntao001/fix-docker-in-docker-network-issue-in-kubernetes-cc18c229d9e5.

As described, the issue is actually due to the MTU the DIND service uses when it starts. By default, it uses 1500. Unfortunately, a lot of Kubernetes overlay networks will set a smaller MTU of around 1450. Since DIND is a service running on an overlay network it needs to use an MTU equal to or smaller than the overlay network in order to work properly. If your build process happens to download a file that is larger than the Maximum Transmission Unit then it will wait indefinitely for data that will never arrive. This is because DIND, and the app using it, thinks the MTU is 1500 when it is actually 1450.

Anyway, this isn’t about what MTU is or how it works, it’s about how to configure a Gitlab based job that is using the DIND service with a smaller MTU. Thankfully it’s easy to do.

In your .gitlab-ci.yml file where you enable the dind service add a command or parameter to pass to Gitlab, like this: 

Build Image:
  image: docker
  services:
    - name: docker:dind
      command: ["--mtu 1000"]
  variables:
    DOCKER_DRIVER: overlay2
    DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR: ""
    DOCKER_HOST: tcp://localhost:2375

This example shown will work if you are using a Kubernetes based Gitlab Runner. With this added, you should find that your build stalls go away and everything works as expected.

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Arm processors, used in Raspberry Pi’s and maybe even in a future Mac, are gaining in popularity due to their reduced cost and improved power efficiency over more traditional x86 offerings. As Arm processor adoption accelerates the need for Docker images that support both x86 and Arm will become more and more a necessity. Luckily, recent releases of Docker are capable of building images for multiple architectures. In this post I will cover one way to achieve this by combining a recent release of Gitlab (12+), k3s and the buildx plugin for Docker.

I am taking inspiration for this post from two places. First, this excellent writeup was a great help in getting things start – https://dev.to/jdrouet/multi-arch-images-with-docker-152f. This post was also instrumental in getting this going – https://medium.com/@artur.klauser/building-multi-architecture-docker-images-with-buildx-27d80f7e2408.

I assume you already have a working installation of Gitlab with the container registry configured. Optionally, you can use Docker Hub but I won’t cover that in detail. Using Docker Hub involves changing the repository URL and then logging into Docker Hub. You will also need some system available capable of running k3s that is using at least Linux 4.15+. For this you can use either Ubuntu 18.04+ or CentOS 8. There may be other options but I know these two will work. The kernel version is a hard requirement and is something that caused me some headache. If I had just RTFM I could have saved myself some time. For my setup I installed k3s onto a CentOS 8 VM and then connected it to Gitlab. For information on how to setup k3s and connecting it to Gitlab please see this post.

Once you are running k3s on a system with a supported kernel you can start building multi-arch images using buildx. I have created an example project available at https://github.com/dustinrue/buildx-example that you can import into Gitlab to get you started. This example project targets a runner tagged as kubernetes to perform the build. Here is a breakdown of what the .gitlab-ci.yml file is doing:

  • Installs buildx from GitHub (https://github.com/docker/buildx) as a Docker cli plugin
  • Registers qemu binaries to emulate whatever platform you request
  • Builds the images for the requested platforms
  • Pushes resulting images up to the Gitlab Docker Registry

Unlike the linked to posts I also had to add in a docker buildx inspect --bootstrap to make things work properly. Without this the new context was never active and the builds would fail.

The example .gitlab-ci.yml builds multiple architectures. You can request what architectures to build using the --platform flag. This command, docker buildx build --push --platform linux/amd64,linux/arm64,linux/arm/v7,linux/arm/v6 -t ${CI_REGISTRY_URL}:${CI_COMMIT_SHORT_SHA} . will cause images to be build for the listed architectures. If you need a list of available architectures you can target you can add docker buildx ls right before the build command to see a list of supported architectures.

Once the build has completed you can validate everything using docker manifest inspect. Most likely you will need to enable experimental features for your client. Your command will look similar to this DOCKER_CLI_EXPERIMENTAL=enabled docker manifest inspect <REGISTRY_URL>/drue/buildx-example:9ae6e4fb. Be sure to replace the path to the image with your image. Your output will look similar to this if everything worked properly:

{
   "schemaVersion": 2,
   "mediaType": "application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.list.v2+json",
   "manifests": [
      {
         "mediaType": "application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.v2+json",
         "size": 527,
         "digest": "sha256:611e6c65d9b4da5ce9f2b1cd0922f7cf8b5ef78b8f7d6d7c02f793c97251ce6b",
         "platform": {
            "architecture": "amd64",
            "os": "linux"
         }
      },
      {
         "mediaType": "application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.v2+json",
         "size": 527,
         "digest": "sha256:6a85417fda08d90b7e3e58630e5281a6737703651270fa59e99fdc8c50a0d2e5",
         "platform": {
            "architecture": "arm64",
            "os": "linux"
         }
      },
      {
         "mediaType": "application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.v2+json",
         "size": 527,
         "digest": "sha256:30c58a067e691c51e91b801348905a724c59fecead96e645693b561456c0a1a8",
         "platform": {
            "architecture": "arm",
            "os": "linux",
            "variant": "v7"
         }
      },
      {
         "mediaType": "application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.v2+json",
         "size": 527,
         "digest": "sha256:3243e1f1e55934547d74803804fe3d595f121dd7f09b7c87053384d516c1816a",
         "platform": {
            "architecture": "arm",
            "os": "linux",
            "variant": "v6"
         }
      }
   ]
}

You should see multiple architectures listed.

I hope this is enough to get you up and running building multi-arch Docker images. If you have any questions please open an issue on Github and I’ll try to get it answered.

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Whatever your reason for placing an NGINX proxy in front of your Gitlab installation, you need to ensure you’re using the right configuration to support all of Gitlab’s features. I recently discovered that although my installation was mostly working I couldn’t get pipeline/build logs properly. I discovered that my proxy configuration was to blame. After some searching around I finally found that my config wasn’t quite right. To get the most out of Gitlab and ensure a smooth experience use configuration shown below as a template for your own. In my setup I use LetsEncrypt for SSL so if you’re not you can remove any of the SSL specific parts. The important configuration information is contained the the location block.

 

upstream gitlab {
  server <ip of your gitlab server>:<port>;
}

server {
    listen          443;
    server_name     <your gitlab server hostname;

    ssl on;
    ssl_certificate <path to cert>;
    ssl_certificate_key <path to key>;
    ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
    server_tokens off;


    gzip on;
    gzip_vary on;
    gzip_disable "msie6";
    gzip_types application/json;
    gzip_proxied any;
    gzip_comp_level 6;
    gzip_buffers 16 8k;
    gzip_http_version 1.1;

    location / {
       client_max_body_size   0;
       proxy_set_header    Host                $http_host;
       proxy_set_header    X-Real-IP           $remote_addr;
       proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-Ssl     on;
       proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-For     $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-Proto   $scheme;

      proxy_pass https://gitlab;
    }
}

This configuration will properly pass all requests through to your Gitlab server as well as allow CI/CD pipeline logs to pass through properly.