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Use Case - Running a bootc container providing Apache HTTP server

In this example, we will build a container image from a Containerfile and we will then use it as a source for a VM.

The Containerfile in the example:

  • Updates packages
  • Installs tmux and mkpasswd to create a simple user password
  • Creates a bootc-user user in the image
  • Adds the wheel group to sudoers
  • Installs Apache Server
  • Enables the systemd unit for httpd
  • Adds a custom index.html
Review Containerfile.httpd 
MAINTAINER Alessandro Rossi <al.rossi87@gmail.com>
FROM registry.redhat.io/rhel9/rhel-bootc:9.5
RUN dnf -y update && dnf -y install tmux mkpasswd
RUN pass=$(mkpasswd --method=SHA-512 --rounds=4096 redhat) && useradd -m -G wheel bootc-user -p $pass
RUN echo "%wheel        ALL=(ALL)       NOPASSWD: ALL" > /etc/sudoers.d/wheel-sudo
RUN dnf -y install httpd && \
    systemctl enable httpd && \
    mv /var/www /usr/share/www && \
    sed -ie 's,/var/www,/usr/share/www,' /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
COPY files/index.html /usr/share/www/html/index.html
EXPOSE 80

Building the image

From the root folder of the repository, switch to the use case directory:

cd use-cases/bootc-container-httpd

To build the image:

podman build -f Containerfile.httpd -t rhel-bootc-httpd .

Testing the image

You can now test it using:

podman run -it --name rhel-bootc-httpd --hostname rhel-bootc-httpd -p 8080:80 rhel-bootc-httpd

Note: The "-p 8080:80" part forwards the container's http port to the port 8080 on the host to test that it is working.

The container will now start and a login prompt will appear:

On another terminal tab or in your browser, you can verify that the httpd server is working and serving traffic.

Terminal

 ~ ▓▒░ curl localhost:8080

Browser

Exploring the container

If you are curious, you can easily log-in to the container using the prompt coming from the execution and the bootc-user/redhat user and password.

From here, you can verify that:

  • The user has sudo privileges
[bootc-user@rhel-bootc-bootc ~]$ sudo su
bash-5.1# whoami
root
  • There's systemd running
bash-5.1# systemctl status | more
● rhel-bootc-httpd
    State: running
    Units: 234 loaded (incl. loaded aliases)
     Jobs: 0 queued
   Failed: 0 units
    Since: Fri 2024-07-19 08:19:28 UTC; 1min 57s ago
  systemd: 252-32.el9_4
  • Apache is loaded as a systemd unit
bash-5.1# systemctl status httpd
● httpd.service - The Apache HTTP Server
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2024-07-19 08:19:29 UTC; 2min 28s ago
       Docs: man:httpd.service(8)
   Main PID: 90 (httpd)
     Status: "Total requests: 1; Idle/Busy workers 100/0;Requests/sec: 0.00719; Bytes served/sec:   2 B/sec"
      Tasks: 177 (limit: 1638)
     Memory: 22.0M
        CPU: 159ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/httpd.service
             ├─ 90 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
             ├─115 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
             ├─117 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
             ├─118 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
             └─119 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND