How to use this image

All examples in this guide use the public image. If you've mirrored the repository for your own use (for example, to your Docker Hub namespace), update your commands to reference the mirrored image instead of the public one.

For example:

• Public image: dhi.io/kubeflow-pvcviewer-controller:<tag>
• Mirrored image: <your-namespace>/dhi-kubeflow-pvcviewer-controller:<tag>

For the examples, you must first use docker login dhi.io to authenticate to the registry to pull the images.

Run the controller

This image is the Kubeflow PVCViewer Controller, a Kubernetes operator. It watches PVCViewer resources in the kubeflow.org/v1alpha1 API group and creates a Deployment for each viewer (by default, a file browser pod). When spec.networking is set, it also creates a Service and an Istio VirtualService. It serves the mutating and validating admission webhooks for PVCViewer. The image runs the /manager entrypoint as user 65532. The controller is upstream's pvcviewer-controller from the Kubeflow Notebooks project⁠.

Print the supported flags with:

docker run --rm dhi.io/kubeflow-pvcviewer-controller:1.11.1-alpine3.24 --help

The Debian 13 build takes the same arguments:

docker run --rm dhi.io/kubeflow-pvcviewer-controller:1.11.1-debian13 --help

The flags that matter for deployment are:

The controller needs a Kubernetes API server. Started without one, it exits with status 1 and logs unable to get kubeconfig.

Deploy in a Kubernetes cluster

Deploy the controller with the upstream manifests from the v1.11.1 tag of kubeflow/notebooks, under components/pvcviewer-controller. Use the upstream config/default overlay and point its manager container at the DHI image. Before you apply it, the cluster needs:

• The PVCViewer CustomResourceDefinition from config/crd/bases/kubeflow.org_pvcviewers.yaml.
• The RBAC from config/rbac, bound to the controller-manager service account.
• A TLS certificate for the webhook server, stored in the Secret webhook-server-cert (the upstream overlay issues it with cert-manager and injects the CA into the webhook configurations).
• The Istio virtualservices.networking.istio.io CRD. The controller watches VirtualServices on start, whether or not you set spec.networking, and it reconciles no PVCViewer until that kind exists.

The manager container needs these settings. The image's user is numeric (65532), so runAsNonRoot can be verified:

spec:
  securityContext:
    runAsNonRoot: true
    runAsUser: 65532
    runAsGroup: 65532
  containers:
    - name: manager
      image: dhi.io/kubeflow-pvcviewer-controller:1.11.1-alpine3.24
      args:
        - --health-probe-bind-address=:8081
        - --metrics-bind-address=127.0.0.1:8080
        - --leader-elect
      ports:
        - containerPort: 9443
          name: webhook-server
          protocol: TCP
      volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /tmp/k8s-webhook-server/serving-certs
          name: cert
          readOnly: true
  volumes:
    - name: cert
      secret:
        secretName: webhook-server-cert
        defaultMode: 420

The metrics endpoint listens on 127.0.0.1:8080 only. The upstream overlay adds a kube-rbac-proxy sidecar that serves metrics on port 8443 with authentication. That sidecar is not part of this image.

Create a PVCViewer for a PersistentVolumeClaim in the same namespace. This example is based on the upstream sample. The pvc and rwoScheduling fields are required:

apiVersion: kubeflow.org/v1alpha1
kind: PVCViewer
metadata:
  name: example-viewer
  namespace: kubeflow-user-example-com
spec:
  pvc: example-pvc
  rwoScheduling: true
  networking:
    targetPort: 8080
    basePrefix: "/pvcviewer"
    rewrite: "/"

Omit spec.networking if you do not want a Service and a VirtualService for the viewer. Without it, the controller creates only the Deployment. The VirtualService CRD is still required, as listed above.

Image variants

Docker Hardened Images come in different variants depending on their intended use. Image variants are identified by their tag.

• Runtime variants are designed to run your application in production. These images are intended to be used either directly or as the FROM image in the final stage of a multi-stage build. These images typically:

  • Run as a nonroot user
  • Do not include a shell or a package manager
  • Contain only the minimal set of libraries needed to run the app

• Build-time variants typically include dev in the tag name and are intended for use in the first stage of a multi-stage Dockerfile. These images typically:

  • Run as the root user
  • Include a shell and package manager
  • Are used to build or compile applications

• FIPS variants include fips in the variant name and tag. They come in both runtime and build-time variants. These variants use cryptographic modules that have been validated under FIPS 140, a U.S. government standard for secure cryptographic operations. For example, usage of MD5 fails in FIPS variants.

To view the image variants and get more information about them, select the Tags tab for this repository, and then select a tag.

Migrate to a Docker Hardened Image

To migrate your application to a Docker Hardened Image, you must update your Dockerfile. At minimum, you must update the base image in your existing Dockerfile to a Docker Hardened Image. This and a few other common changes are listed in the following table of migration notes.

The following steps outline the general migration process.

1. Find hardened images for your app.

   A hardened image may have several variants. Inspect the image tags and find the image variant that meets your needs.

2. Update the base image in your Dockerfile.

   Update the base image in your application's Dockerfile to the hardened image you found in the previous step. For framework images, this is typically going to be an image tagged as dev because it has the tools needed to install packages and dependencies.

3. For multi-stage Dockerfiles, update the runtime image in your Dockerfile.

   To ensure that your final image is as minimal as possible, you should use a multi-stage build. All stages in your Dockerfile should use a hardened image. While intermediary stages will typically use images tagged as dev, your final runtime stage should use a non-dev image variant.

4. Install additional packages

   Docker Hardened Images contain minimal packages in order to reduce the potential attack surface. You may need to install additional packages in your Dockerfile. Inspect the image variants to identify which packages are already installed.

   Only images tagged as dev typically have package managers. You should use a multi-stage Dockerfile to install the packages. Install the packages in the build stage that uses a dev image. Then, if needed, copy any necessary artifacts to the runtime stage that uses a non-dev image.

   For Alpine-based images, you can use apk to install packages. For Debian-based images, you can use apt-get to install packages.

Troubleshooting migration

The following are common issues that you may encounter during migration.

General debugging

The hardened images intended for runtime don't contain a shell nor any tools for debugging. The recommended method for debugging applications built with Docker Hardened Images is to use Docker Debug⁠ to attach to these containers. Docker Debug provides a shell, common debugging tools, and lets you install other tools in an ephemeral, writable layer that only exists during the debugging session.

Permissions

By default image variants intended for runtime, run as the nonroot user. Ensure that necessary files and directories are accessible to the nonroot user. You may need to copy files to different directories or change permissions so your application running as the nonroot user can access them.

Privileged ports

Non-dev hardened images run as a nonroot user by default. As a result, applications in these images can't bind to privileged ports (below 1024) when running in Kubernetes or in Docker Engine versions older than 20.10. To avoid issues, configure your application to listen on port 1025 or higher inside the container, even if you map it to a lower port on the host. For example, docker run -p 80:8080 my-image will work because the port inside the container is 8080, and docker run -p 80:81 my-image won't work because the port inside the container is 81.

No shell

By default, image variants intended for runtime don't contain a shell. Use dev images in build stages to run shell commands and then copy any necessary artifacts into the runtime stage. In addition, use Docker Debug to debug containers with no shell.

Entry point

Docker Hardened Images may have different entry points than images such as Docker Official Images. Use docker inspect to inspect entry points for Docker Hardened Images and update your Dockerfile if necessary.