Chainguard Container for couchdb

Apache CouchDB is an open-source, document-oriented NoSQL database implemented in Erlang.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/couchdb:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The Chainguard couchdb image is intended to to be a drop-in replacement for the official CouchDB image and is meant to be run with the couchdb Helm chart.

Chainguard's CouchDB image stores its data in /usr/share/couchdb, with a symbolic link to /opt/couchdb to provide compatibility with the external image.

The uid/gid for the couchdb user is 65532.

Getting Started

The default entrypoint starts the CouchDB server. It needs the username and password to be provided via environment variables.

For example:

docker run \
  COUCHDB_USER=user -e COUCHDB_PASSWORD=s3cret \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/couchdb
[info] 2024-12-16T15:07:55.285349Z nonode@nohost <0.249.0> -------- Preflight check: Checking For Monsters
[info] 2024-12-16T15:07:55.287213Z nonode@nohost <0.249.0> -------- Preflight check: Asserting Admin Account
[info] 2024-12-16T15:07:55.291284Z nonode@nohost <0.249.0> -------- Apache CouchDB 3.3.3 is starting.
[info] 2024-12-16T15:07:55.291404Z nonode@nohost <0.250.0> -------- Starting couch_sup
[notice] 2024-12-16T15:07:55.306213Z nonode@nohost <0.104.0> -------- config: [admins] user set to '****' for reason nil
[info] 2024-12-16T15:07:55.368549Z nonode@nohost <0.249.0> -------- Apache CouchDB has started. Time to relax.

To add a volume to persist the data, mount it as /opt/couchdb/data, like this:

docker run \
  -v /path/to/couchdbstorage:/opt/couchdb/data \
  COUCHDB_USER=user -e COUCHDB_PASSWORD=s3cret \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/couchdb

The entrypoint script will provide permissions for the data so that the couchdb user can read and write to it.

Helm Chart Usage

The Chainguard CouchDB image can be used with the CouchDB Helm chart. To use the Chainguard image with the chart, provide the following values to it:

# provide UUID for the cluster, as required by the Helm chart
# NOTE: replace decafbaddecafbaddecafbaddecafbad with a valid UUID
couchdbConfig:
  couchdb:
    uuid=decafbaddecafbaddecafbaddecafbad
# use the Chainguard image with latest tag
image:
  repository: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/couchdb
  tag: latest

Assuming these values are saved as cgr_values.yaml, you will be able to run the following to install CouchDB:

helm repo add couchdb https://apache.github.io/couchdb-helm
helm install couchdb couchdb/couchdb --values cgr_values.yaml

User

By default the image starts as root user to perform chaning of permissions of storage data and initializing configuration. The couchdb server is then run as couchdb user.

It is also possible to run the image (and Helm chart) as couchdb user. To do it, simply pass -u 65532 flag to docker to specify the userid for couchdb - such as:

docker run \
  -u 65532 \
  COUCHDB_USER=user -e COUCHDB_PASSWORD=s3cret \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/couchdb

To set the user, group and default filesystem group to couchdb in the Helm chart, add the following to the values file:

containerSecurityContext:
  runAsUser: 65532
  runAsGroup: 65532
  fsGroup: 65532

When running the container as non-root, the volume permissions need to be set to the appropriate user and, in some cases, to the appropriate group, especially when using non-root approach with volumes containing existing data.

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard Containers are minimal container images that are secure by default.

In many cases, the Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Containers are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a -dev variant.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to leverage the -dev variants, copying application artifacts into a final minimal container that offers a reduced attack surface that won’t allow package installations or logins.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Containers, please visit Chainguard Academy and Chainguard Courses.

In addition to Containers, Chainguard offers VMs and Libraries. Contact Chainguard to access additional products.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.