envbox

Introduction

envbox is an image that enables creating non-privileged containers capable of running system-level software (e.g. dockerd, systemd, etc) in Kubernetes.

It mainly acts as a wrapper for the excellent sysbox runtime developed by Nestybox. For more details on the security of sysbox containers see sysbox's official documentation.

Envbox Configuration

The environment variables can be used to configure various aspects of the inner and outer container.

env	usage	required
CODER_INNER_IMAGE	The image to use for the inner container.	True
CODER_INNER_USERNAME	The username to use for the inner container.	True
CODER_AGENT_TOKEN	The Coder Agent token to pass to the inner container.	True
CODER_INNER_ENVS	The environment variables to pass to the inner container. A wildcard can be used to match a prefix. Ex: CODER_INNER_ENVS=KUBERNETES_*,MY_ENV,MY_OTHER_ENV	false
CODER_INNER_HOSTNAME	The hostname to use for the inner container.	false
CODER_IMAGE_PULL_SECRET	The docker credentials to use when pulling the inner container. The recommended way to do this is to create an Image Pull Secret and then reference the secret using an environment variable. See below for example.	false
CODER_DOCKER_BRIDGE_CIDR	The bridge CIDR to start the Docker daemon with.	false
CODER_MOUNTS	A list of mounts to mount into the inner container. Mounts default to rw. Ex: CODER_MOUNTS=/home/coder:/home/coder,/var/run/mysecret:/var/run/mysecret:ro	false
CODER_USR_LIB_DIR	The mountpoint of the host /usr/lib directory. Only required when using GPUs.	false
CODER_ADD_TUN	If CODER_ADD_TUN=true add a TUN device to the inner container.	false
CODER_ADD_FUSE	If CODER_ADD_FUSE=true add a FUSE device to the inner container.	false
CODER_ADD_GPU	If CODER_ADD_GPU=true add detected GPUs and related files to the inner container. Requires setting CODER_USR_LIB_DIR and mounting in the hosts /usr/lib/ directory.	false
CODER_CPUS	Dictates the number of CPUs to allocate the inner container. It is recommended to set this using the Kubernetes Downward API.	false
CODER_MEMORY	Dictates the max memory (in bytes) to allocate the inner container. It is recommended to set this using the Kubernetes Downward API.	false
CODER_DISABLE_IDMAPPED_MOUNT	Disables idmapped mounts in sysbox. For more information, see the Sysbox Documentation.	false

Coder Template

A Coder Template can be found in the coder/coder repo to provide a starting point for customizing an envbox container.

To learn more about Coder Templates refer to the docs.

Development

It is not possible to develop envbox effectively using a containerized environment (includes developing envbox using envbox). A VM, personal machine, or similar environment is required to run the integration test suite.

CODER_IMAGE_PULL_SECRET Kubernetes Example

If a login is required to pull images from a private repository, create a secret following the instructions from the Kubernetes Documentation as such:

kubectl -n <coder namespace> create secret docker-registry regcred \
        --docker-server=<your-registry-server> \
        --docker-username=<your-name> \
        --docker-password=<your-pword> \
        --docker-email=<your-email>

Then reference the secret in your template as such:

env {
  name = "CODER_IMAGE_PULL_SECRET"
  value_from {
    secret_key_ref {
      name = "regcred"
      key =  ".dockerconfigjson"
    }
  }
}

Note:

If you use external tooling to generate the secret, ensure that it is generated with the same fields as kubectl create secret docker-registry. You can check this with the following command:

kubectl create secret docker-registry example --docker-server=registry.domain.tld --docker-username=username --docker-password=password --dry-run=client --output=json | jq -r '.data[".dockerconfigjson"]' | base64 -d | jq

Sample output:

{
  "auths": {
    "registry.domain.tld": {
      "username": "username",
      "password": "password",
      "auth": "dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ=" // base64(username:password)
    }
  }
}