ranger

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for ranger

Centralized security administration, authorization and auditing for the Apache Hadoop ecosystem

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/ranger:latest

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

Compatibility Notes

This image packages the Apache Ranger Admin service and is comparable to the upstream apache/ranger image, with the following differences:

• Upstream builds one image per database flavor through its RANGER_DB_TYPE build argument. This image ships the PostgreSQL JDBC driver at /usr/share/java/postgresql.jar, which corresponds to upstream's ranger_postgres target.
• Ranger Admin runs on OpenJDK 11 here, so JAVA_HOME is /usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk rather than upstream's /opt/java/openjdk.
• The apache-ranger Python client used by the provisioning script is installed into a virtual environment at /opt/chainguard/ranger. As upstream places it at /opt/venv and puts that directory first on PATH, this image provides /opt/venv as a symlink so the same layout works.
• Upstream removes install.properties from the admin directory and expects one to be mounted. This image keeps the distribution default and additionally ships upstream's per-database templates in /home/ranger/scripts.
• Kerberos is not supported. The wait_for_keytab.sh helpers that ranger.sh invokes when KERBEROS_ENABLED=true are not part of this image.
• The Knox, Storm, and Kylin plugin bundles are not included. Policies for those service types can still be created, edited, and served to plugins, but the admin console cannot run Test Connection or offer resource-name autocomplete for them. The other seventeen service types are unaffected.

The provisioning step that the entrypoint runs after startup, create-ranger-services.py, connects to http://ranger:6080. The container or Kubernetes Service must therefore be reachable under the name ranger.

Prerequisites

• A PostgreSQL database the admin service can reach. The shipped template expects it at the hostname ranger-db.
• Apache Solr for audit logging. Audits cannot be turned off by emptying audit_store: the generated configuration keeps ranger.audit.source.type set to solr, so the console reports a Solr error until one is reachable.

Getting Started

Create a network so the admin service and its database can reach each other:

docker network create ranger-net

Start PostgreSQL under the hostname the shipped template expects:

docker run -d --name ranger-db --network ranger-net \
  -e POSTGRES_DB=postgres \
  -e POSTGRES_USER=postgres \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD='rangerR0cks!' \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/postgres:latest

Start Ranger Admin. The container is named ranger so that the post-start provisioning script can reach the API, and the shipped PostgreSQL template is staged as install.properties:

docker run -d --name ranger --network ranger-net -p 6080:6080 \
  --entrypoint /bin/bash cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/ranger:latest -c '
    cp /home/ranger/scripts/ranger-admin-install-postgres.properties \
      /opt/ranger/admin/install.properties
    exec /home/ranger/scripts/ranger.sh'

The first start loads the database schema before Tomcat comes up, which takes a few minutes. Once it is ready, the web UI answers on port 6080:

curl -sf -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' http://localhost:6080/login.jsp

200

Sign in at localhost:6080 as admin with the password from the template, or query the REST API directly. This lists the services the entrypoint seeded:

curl -s -u 'admin:rangerR0cks!' \
  http://localhost:6080/service/plugins/services | jq -r '.services[].name' | sort

dev_hbase
dev_hdfs
dev_hive
dev_kafka
dev_kms
dev_knox
dev_ozone
dev_solr
dev_trino
dev_yarn

Configuration

Ranger Admin is configured through install.properties, which setup.sh reads on first start to create the schema, seed accounts, and write the runtime configuration. Start from the template the image ships rather than writing one from scratch: setup.sh reads keys such as setup_mode and hadoop_conf that are easy to leave out, and it fails without them. Copy the PostgreSQL template out of the image:

docker run --rm --entrypoint /bin/cat cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/ranger:latest \
  /home/ranger/scripts/ranger-admin-install-postgres.properties > install.properties

Then set the values for your deployment:

sed -i \
  -e 's|^db_host=.*|db_host=postgres.example.com|' \
  -e 's|^db_root_password=.*|db_root_password=CHANGEME|' \
  -e 's|^db_password=.*|db_password=CHANGEME|' \
  -e 's|^rangerAdmin_password=.*|rangerAdmin_password=CHANGEME|' \
  -e 's|^policymgr_external_url=.*|policymgr_external_url=https://ranger.example.com|' \
  install.properties

Mount it when starting the container:

docker run -d --name ranger --network ranger-net -p 6080:6080 \
  -v "$(pwd)/install.properties:/opt/ranger/admin/install.properties" \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/ranger:latest

The passwords in the template are the accounts Ranger creates in its own database, so replace every one of them before using this outside a local test — the template also sets rangerTagsync_password, rangerUsersync_password, and keyadmin_password. Audits go to Solr, and emptying audit_store does not turn them off — the generated configuration keeps ranger.audit.source.type as solr with an unsubstituted host placeholder, and the console then reports a Solr error on every page. Point audit_solr_urls at a collection created with the configset the image ships in /opt/ranger/admin/contrib/solr_for_audit_setup/conf, and clear the audit_jaas_client_* keys unless that Solr uses Kerberos. policymgr_external_url is the address clients use to reach the admin service, so set it to the URL your deployment is served on rather than leaving the container-local default.

The entrypoint marks a completed setup with /opt/ranger/.setupDone. Mount a volume over /opt/ranger if you want that state, and the configuration setup.sh generates, to survive a container restart.

Documentation and Resources

• Apache Ranger documentation
• Ranger REST API reference
• Apache Ranger wiki

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system 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 development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

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.