Chainguard Container for flux-helm-controller-iamguarded-fips

minimal zero CVE flux images

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/flux-helm-controller-iamguarded-fips:latest

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

Overview

Flux IAMGuarded is a security-enhanced variant of Flux designed to be deployed using its companion IAMGuarded Helm chart. This image and chart combination provides additional security benefits over standard Flux deployments.

Helm Chart Installation

The Flux IAMGuarded Helm chart is delivered exclusively through the same OCI registry as your Chainguard images:

cgr.dev/$ORGANIZATION/iamguarded-charts/flux

Basic Installation

Once authenticated (see below) you can install the chart with standard Helm commands and your organization name:

helm install flux oci://cgr.dev/$ORGANIZATION/iamguarded-charts/flux \
  --set "global.org=$ORGANIZATION"

Important: Replace $ORGANIZATION with your Chainguard organization name. The default organization in the chart values is chainguard-private, which must be changed to match your organization.

Configuration Requirements

Providing FIPS image(s) to chart

In order to provide FIPS image(s), they have to be explicitly provided as values to chart - such as:

# Helm Controller image
helmController:
  image:
    repository: $ORGANIZATION/flux-helm-controller-iamguarded-fips

# Kustomize Controller image
kustomizeController:
  image:
    repository: $ORGANIZATION/flux-kustomize-controller-iamguarded-fips

# Notification Controller image
notificationController:
  image:
    repository: $ORGANIZATION/flux-notification-controller-iamguarded-fips

# Source Controller image
sourceController:
  image:
    repository: $ORGANIZATION/flux-source-controller-iamguarded-fips

# Image Automation Controller image
imageAutomationController:
  image:
    repository: $ORGANIZATION/flux-image-automation-controller-iamguarded-fips

# Image Reflector Controller image
imageReflectorController:
  image:
    repository: $ORGANIZATION/flux-image-reflector-controller-iamguarded-fips

# OS Shell image for volume permissions
volumePermissions:
  enabled: true
  image:
    repository: $ORGANIZATION/os-shell-iamguarded-fips

Organization Setting

The global.org value is required and can be set either:

• Via --set flag during installation
• In your existing values.yaml file

Registry Configuration

For users who mirror images to custom repositories:

• Use global.imageRegistry to override the default cgr.dev
• For complex mirroring strategies, consult the chart's values.yaml for individual image configuration options including registry, repository, tag, and digest

Example values.yaml for individual image configuration:

# Helm Controller image
helmController:
  image:
    registry: myregistry.example.com
    repository: mirrored/flux-helm-controller-iamguarded-fips
    digest: sha256:... # Use specific digest instead of tag

# Kustomize Controller image
kustomizeController:
  image:
    registry: myregistry.example.com
    repository: mirrored/flux-kustomize-controller-iamguarded-fips
    digest: sha256:... # Use specific digest instead of tag

# Notification Controller image
notificationController:
  image:
    registry: myregistry.example.com
    repository: mirrored/flux-notification-controller-iamguarded-fips
    digest: sha256:... # Use specific digest instead of tag

# Source Controller image
sourceController:
  image:
    registry: myregistry.example.com
    repository: mirrored/flux-source-controller-iamguarded-fips
    digest: sha256:... # Use specific digest instead of tag

# Image Automation Controller image
imageAutomationController:
  image:
    registry: myregistry.example.com
    repository: mirrored/flux-image-automation-controller-iamguarded-fips
    digest: sha256:... # Use specific digest instead of tag

# Image Reflector Controller image
imageReflectorController:
  image:
    registry: myregistry.example.com
    repository: mirrored/flux-image-reflector-controller-iamguarded-fips
    digest: sha256:... # Use specific digest instead of tag

# OS Shell image for volume permissions
volumePermissions:
  enabled: true
  image:
    registry: myregistry.example.com
    repository: mirrored/os-shell-iamguarded-fips
    digest: sha256:... # Use specific digest instead of tag

Authentication

Ensure proper pull credentials are configured through one of the following methods:

Option 1: Using Helm values with global.imagePullSecrets

# values.yaml
global:
  imagePullSecrets:
    - name: chainguard-pull-secret

Option 2: Create a Kubernetes pull secret

# Step 1: Authenticate with chainctl and generate a pull token
chainctl auth login
chainctl auth configure-docker --pull-token --save --ttl=24h

# Step 2: Create the Kubernetes secret
kubectl create secret docker-registry chainguard-pull-secret \
  --docker-server=cgr.dev \
  --docker-username=$(echo cgr.dev | docker-credential-cgr get | jq -r '.Username') \
  --docker-password=$(echo cgr.dev | docker-credential-cgr get | jq -r '.Secret') \
  -n <your-namespace>

# Step 3: Reference the secret in your Helm installation
helm install flux oci://cgr.dev/$ORGANIZATION/iamguarded-charts/flux \
  --set "global.org=$ORGANIZATION" \
  --set "global.imagePullSecrets[0].name=chainguard-pull-secret"

Option 3: Cluster node-scoped registry permissions (cluster-dependent)

Best Practices

1. Pin to Digest: While charts follow the same tagging scheme as Chainguard images, always pin to a specific chart digest to prevent unexpected updates:

   helm install flux oci://cgr.dev/$ORGANIZATION/iamguarded-charts/flux@sha256:DIGEST \
     --set "global.org=$ORGANIZATION"

   The digest can be found in the output of helm pull e.g:

   helm pull oci://cgr.dev/$ORGANIZATION/iamguarded-charts/flux
   Pulled: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/iamguarded-charts/flux:2.1.2
   Digest: sha256:6471bd888adc895c4c8d259fd72ae7d165da585208bf5670228319c8c0872a49

   Digest value for illustrative purposes only.

2. Review Default Values: The chart provides security-minded defaults that are sensible but may not be production-ready for all use cases. Review the chart's values.yaml (run helm show values) for the full range of configuration options.

3. Image Pinning: All IAMGuarded charts pin images to specific digests that have been tested for compatibility, ensuring reliable deployments.

Validation

After deployment, validate your Flux IAMGuarded installation:

kubectl get po -n flux-system

You should see Flux controller pods running:

NAME                                           READY   STATUS     RESTARTS    AGE
flux-automation-controller-7f68666bff-j6447    1/1     Running    0           70s
flux-helm-controller-f5f499667-2gz95           1/1     Running    0           70s
flux-kustomize-controller-79dfd8fd4d-gkd2x     1/1     Running    0           70s
flux-notification-controller-b6857989f-psgvg   1/1     Running    0           70s
flux-reflector-controller-fbb74dcc8-dlzpd      1/1     Running    0           70s
flux-source-controller-68cf5d8fdb-fsfps        1/1     Running    0           70s

For more information on Flux, including follow-on steps on how to validate the installation, please refer to Getting started with Flux.

Prerequisites

Prerequisites are defined in the chart's Chart.yaml and individual templates. No additional requirements beyond standard Kubernetes and Helm functionality are needed.

For detailed configuration options and advanced usage, refer to the chart's values.yaml file.

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.