dockershim

Documentation

Overview

Package dockershim decorates Kubernetes pod groups discovered from Docker container names managed by the (in)famous Docker shim.

The Kubernetes Dockershim

The so-called “dockershim” uses especially crafted Docker container names to encode pod-related information without the need for an additional database. This “stateless” (or, database-less) design allows us to regenerate some Kubernetes pod information (name, namespace, container name from the k8s perspective) given just container names.

Background Information

Docker doesn't seem to have any hard restrictions as to the length of container names. However, it restricts the allowed characters in container names. Simply spoken, Docker container names can consist of lower and upper case aA-zZ, digits 0-9, and finally dashes, underscores and dots. Please note these last three characters cannot be in the first position though. See also Docker: restrictions regarding naming container.

The Kubernetes dockershim encodes pod-related information in Docker container names as follows:

k8s_<containername>_<metadata.name>_<metadata.namespace>_<metadata.uid>_<attempt>[_<random>]

Kubernetes restricts the pod name, namespace, and container name to consist only of lower case a-z, but does not allow uppercase A-Z. It additionally restricts them to the maximum length of DNS labels, that is, 63 characters (not: glyphs).

The special “pause” (sandbox) pod gets the reserved "POD" name. Since Kubernetes only allow lower case letters in container names, this ensures that there never can be a conflicting user container also named "POD", only a non-conflicting "pod". See also the aptly named leaky.go definition.

As the metadata.uid field can use different uid schemes, don't rely on a specific format. Just take it as a Docker-conforming string, nothing more. It cannot contain underscores, as these are already used for separating the individual pod data fields.

The attempt field is of no interest to us, as it is related to the so-called sandbox (=pause container) management.

The random appendix only appears in case of Docker somehow loosing its mind due to the Docker container name conflict bug. It seems to be present in Docker versions up to 1.11, at least the Kubernetes Docker shim seems to suggest this. See see also the details of the (closed) Docker bug.

Index

• func Decorate(engines []*model.ContainerEngine, labels map[string]string)

Functions

func Decorate

func Decorate(engines []*model.ContainerEngine, labels map[string]string)

Decorate decorates the discovered Docker containers with pod groups, where applicable.