Chainguard Image for vault

Container image for Vault, a cross-platform secrets manager and authentication tool.

Chainguard Images are regularly-updated, minimal container images with low-to-zero CVEs.

Download this Image

This image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/vault: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 Vault Chainguard image was built to work as a drop-in replacement for the official hashicorp/vault image. This image supports the same environment variables as the hashicorp/vault image but also has a number of key differences, including the following:

• The directory for configuration files is /etc/vault
• The directory for filesystem driver (not used by default) is /var/lib/vault
• The directory for logs (not used by default) is /var/log/vault
• The vault binary and entrypoint script are stored in /usr/bin
• The underlying OS is Wolfi (which is glibc based) whereas the Hashicorp image uses Alpine (which is musl based)

Additionally, note that the Vault Chainguard image starts as the root user and switches to the lower privileged vault user in the entrypoint script.

Getting Started

The Chainguard Vault image contains the Vault server binary and supporting config. The image is intended to be a drop-in replacement for the upstream hashicorp/vault or vault images and compatible with the Hashicorp Helm chart.

The default entrypoint starts a single-node instance of the server in development mode for testing and development. Note that the container should be given the IPC_LOCK capability.

You can start the container with the following command:

docker run --cap-add IPC_LOCK cgr.dev/chainguard/vault

==> Vault server configuration:
Administrative Namespace:
         	Api Address: http://0.0.0.0:8200
                 	Cgo: enabled
     	Cluster Address: https://0.0.0.0:8201
   Environment Variables: GOTRACEBACK, HOME, HOSTNAME, PATH, PWD, SHLVL, SSL_CERT_FILE
          	Go Version: go1.23.2
          	Listener 1: tcp (addr: "0.0.0.0:8200", cluster address: "0.0.0.0:8201", disable_request_limiter: "false", max_request_duration: "1m30s", max_request_size: "33554432", tls: "disabled")
           	Log Level:
               	Mlock: supported: true, enabled: false
       	Recovery Mode: false
             	Storage: inmem
             	Version: Vault v1.17.6, built 2024-11-06T19:17:24Z
         	Version Sha: 69a720d5d940bfcd590d7c24f3c98f178673d796
. . .
==> Vault server started! Log data will stream in below:
. . .

IPC_LOCK Capability

If you run the container without IPC_LOCK capability, you will receive a warning:

docker run cgr.dev/chainguard/vault

Couldn't start vault with IPC_LOCK. Disabling IPC_LOCK, please use --cap-add IPC_LOCK
==> Vault server configuration:
. . .

IPC_LOCK is required for the memory lock (mlock) feature that prevents memory — which could potentially contain sensitive information — from being written to disk. For a full explanation of how it works, refer to the official vault documentation.

To trun on this capability, include the --cap-add IPC_LOCK argument:

docker run --cap-add IPC_LOCK cgr.dev/chainguard/vault

You can alternatively configure a Security Context in Kubernetes:

securityContext:
    runAsNonRoot: true
    runAsUser: 65532
    capabilities:
      add: ["IPC_LOCK"]

Helm Chart Usage

This image and the vault-k8s image can be used with the Helm chart. To replace the official images with the Chainguard images, provide the chart with the following values:

injector:
  image:
    repository: "cgr.dev/$ORGANIZATION/vault-k8s"
    tag: "latest"

  agentImage:
    repository: "cgr.dev/chainguard/vault"
    tag: "latest"

server:
  image:
    repository: "cgr.dev/chainguard/vault"
    tag: "latest"

Note that unlike the Vault image, Chainguard's vault-k8s image is not part of Chainguard's free tier and is only available as a paid image. To use the vault-k8s image like this, you'll need to have access to the image and replace $ORGANIZATION with the name of your organization's private Chainguard registry.

Assuming these values are saved in a file named cgr_values.yaml, you should be able to apply them by running the following commands:

helm repo add hashicorp https://helm.releases.hashicorp.com
helm install vault hashicorp/vault --values cgr_values.yaml

Configuration

To configure Vault for production or other environments you can mount a configuration file to the /etc/vault directory, as in this example:

docker run --cap-add=IPC_LOCK -v $PWD/vault.hcl:/etc/vault/vault.hcl cgr.dev/chainguard/vault server

You can also supply a vault configuration using the VAULT_LOCAL_CONFIG variable, like this:

docker run --cap-add=IPC_LOCK -e 'VAULT_LOCAL_CONFIG={"storage": {"file": {"path": "/var/lib/vault"}}, "listener": [{"tcp": { "address": "0.0.0.0:8200", "tls_disable": true}}], "default_lease_ttl": "168h", "max_lease_ttl": "720h", "ui": true}' -p 8200:8200 cgr.dev/chainguard/vault server

Persisting Data

If using the file data storage plugin, we recommend that you configure it to write to /var/lib/vault.

By default logs will be streamed to stdout and stderr, but can be configured to write to /var/log/vault.

Documentation and Resources

• Official Vault Documentation
• Vault Tutorials

Contact Support

If you have a Zendesk account (typically set up for you by your Customer Success Manager) you can reach out to Chainguard's Customer Success team through our Zendesk portal.

What are Chainguard Images?

Chainguard Images are a collection of container images designed for security and minimalism.

Many Chainguard Images are distroless; they contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These images do not even contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Images are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Images include:

• Minimal design, with no unnecessary software bloat
• Automated nightly builds to ensure Images are completely up-to-date and contain all available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs (software bills of materials) attesting the provenance of all artifacts within the Image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

-dev Variants

As mentioned previously, Chainguard’s distroless Images have no shell or package manager by default. This is great for security, but sometimes you need these things, especially in builder images. For those cases, most (but not all) Chainguard Images come paired with a -dev variant which does include a shell and package manager.

Although the -dev image variants have similar security features as their distroless versions, such as complete SBOMs and signatures, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. The general recommendation is to use the -dev variants only to build the application and then copy all application artifacts into a distroless image, which will result in a final container image that has a minimal attack surface and won’t allow package installations or logins.

That being said, it’s worth noting that -dev variants of Chainguard Images are completely fine to run in production environments. After all, the -dev variants are still more secure than many popular container images based on fully-featured operating systems such as Debian and Ubuntu since they carry less software, follow a more frequent patch cadence, and offer attestations for what they include.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Images, we encourage you to visit Chainguard Academy, our documentation and education platform.