Chainguard Container for vault

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

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/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 Chainguard image is designed to work as a drop-in replacement for the vault image.

This image supports the same environment variables, but has a number of key differences, including:

• 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

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

Getting Started

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

docker run --cap-add IPC_LOCK cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/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/ORGANIZATION/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/ORGANIZATION/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/ORGANIZATION/vault"
    tag: "latest"

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

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/ORGANIZATION/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/ORGANIZATION/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

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.