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How to get started, and achieve tasks, using Kubernetes

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Commands and Capabilities

Containers and commands

So far the Pods we’ve seen have all used the image field to indicate what process Kubernetes should run in a container. In this case, Kubernetes runs the image’s default command. If we want to run a particular command or override the image’s defaults, there are two additional fields that we can use:

  1. Command: Controls the actual command run by the image
  2. Args: Controls the arguments passed to the command

How docker handles command and arguments

Docker images have metadata associated with them that is used to store information about the image. The image author may use this to define defaults for the command and arguments to run a container when the user does not supply values. Docker calls the fields for commands and arguments Entrypoint and Cmd respectively. The full details for this feature are too complicated to describe here, mostly due to the fact that the docker API allows users to specify both of these fields as either a string array or a string and there are subtle differences in how those cases are handled. We encourage the curious to check out Docker’s documentation for this feature.

Kubernetes allows you to override both the image’s default command (docker Entrypoint) and args (docker Cmd) with the Command and Args fields of Container. The rules are:

  1. If you do not supply a Command or Args for a container, the defaults defined by the image will be used
  2. If you supply a Command but no Args for a container, only the supplied Command will be used; the image’s default arguments are ignored
  3. If you supply only Args, the image’s default command will be used with the arguments you supply
  4. If you supply a Command and Args, the image’s defaults will be ignored and the values you supply will be used

Here are examples for these rules in table format

Image Entrypoint Image Cmd Container Command Container Args Command Run
[/ep-1] [foo bar] <not set> <not set> [ep-1 foo bar]
[/ep-1] [foo bar] [/ep-2] <not set> [ep-2]
[/ep-1] [foo bar] <not set> [zoo boo] [ep-1 zoo boo]
[/ep-1] [foo bar] [/ep-2] [zoo boo] [ep-2 zoo boo]

Capabilities

By default, Docker containers are “unprivileged” and cannot, for example, run a Docker daemon inside a Docker container. We can have fine grain control over the capabilities using cap-add and cap-drop.More details here.

The relationship between Docker’s capabilities and Linux capabilities

Docker’s capabilities Linux capabilities
SETPCAP CAP_SETPCAP
SYS_MODULE CAP_SYS_MODULE
SYS_RAWIO CAP_SYS_RAWIO
SYS_PACCT CAP_SYS_PACCT
SYS_ADMIN CAP_SYS_ADMIN
SYS_NICE CAP_SYS_NICE
SYS_RESOURCE CAP_SYS_RESOURCE
SYS_TIME CAP_SYS_TIME
SYS_TTY_CONFIG CAP_SYS_TTY_CONFIG
MKNOD CAP_MKNOD
AUDIT_WRITE CAP_AUDIT_WRITE
AUDIT_CONTROL CAP_AUDIT_CONTROL
MAC_OVERRIDE CAP_MAC_OVERRIDE
MAC_ADMIN CAP_MAC_ADMIN
NET_ADMIN CAP_NET_ADMIN
SYSLOG CAP_SYSLOG
CHOWN CAP_CHOWN
NET_RAW CAP_NET_RAW
DAC_OVERRIDE CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE
FOWNER CAP_FOWNER
DAC_READ_SEARCH CAP_DAC_READ_SEARCH
FSETID CAP_FSETID
KILL CAP_KILL
SETGID CAP_SETGID
SETUID CAP_SETUID
LINUX_IMMUTABLE CAP_LINUX_IMMUTABLE
NET_BIND_SERVICE CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE
NET_BROADCAST CAP_NET_BROADCAST
IPC_LOCK CAP_IPC_LOCK
IPC_OWNER CAP_IPC_OWNER
SYS_CHROOT CAP_SYS_CHROOT
SYS_PTRACE CAP_SYS_PTRACE
SYS_BOOT CAP_SYS_BOOT
LEASE CAP_LEASE
SETFCAP CAP_SETFCAP
WAKE_ALARM CAP_WAKE_ALARM
BLOCK_SUSPEND CAP_BLOCK_SUSPEND

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