Docker Tags, Registries, and User Identity

Docker Tags, Registries, and User IdentityJoe BostianBlockedUnblockFollowFollowingMay 6I’ve been spending a good deal of time recently building Docker images, and pushing them around between development and deployment environments.

The Docker command line interface can feel awkward, and in some cases, confusing until you really understand what’s going on.

While Docker’s tutorial is good, the command documentation often left me asking why …As I’ve become a more capable Docker user, I’ve gained respect for the depth of function that can be expressed through this interface.

Image RegistriesSay you’ve created an image and are ready to share it.

The most common way to do this is to push it to a registry, from which you or others can pull it to a target machine for deployment.

Registries can either be secure (login required), or insecure (no login required).

The default registry is Docker’s index.

docker.

io (a.

k.

a Dockerhub).

You can also set up your own private secure/insecure registries and push or pull your images to/from multiple locations.

This is handy for complex environments where you may be developing for multiple platforms, or need to deploy across an enterprise.

Specifying the destination or source registry of your image, along with other image characteristics when you want to push/pull it is accomplished through tagging.

Image TaggingDocker image tags are metadata strings that include multiple sets of information.

The Docker tag command is described as:Create a tag TARGET_IMAGE that refers to SOURCE_IMAGEReferring to a tag as TARGET_IMAGE made me first think that it was creating a copy of a source image to generate a new target image.

Reading more closely, the tag command is logically binding metadata represented by the tag string to the SOURCE_IMAGE so that Docker knows how to respond to user requests from the command line interface.

Anatomy of an Image TagA conventional image tag has a schema like this:<registry>/<repository>:<version>The registry and version portions of the tag are optional.

If omitted, the registry defaults to index.

docker.

io, and the version becomes latest.

The registry component of an image tag is required if you aren’t using the default Dockerhub.

It consists of IP address and port number separated by a colon:xxx.

xxx.

xxx.

xxx:ppppwhere x is a digit of the IP address, and p is a digit of the port number.

Think of the repository as the name of the image.

The repository is effectively a path to the image that is made up of components, just like the name of a file in a local file system.

The Docker Tag CommandA source of confusion for me has been an apparent recursion in the Docker tag command description:docker tag SOURCE_IMAGE[:TAG] TARGET_IMAGE[:TAG]TARGET_IMAGE, is referred to as a tag but as you can see, the command description uses the term TAG to represent the image version.

In actuality, everything but the registry portion of the tag has a meaning defined by convention, and not actual syntax.

That is, you can make the repository and version any arbitrary string you want, but you’re better off using these like everyone else does.

It makes things easier to manage.

If for example you wanted to tag a version v2 of an image with ID 4f98c0d6d5d4 for your private registry at address 192.

168.

1.

55, listening to port 5000, it would look something like this:docker tag 4f98c0d6d5d4 192.

168.

1.

55:5000/jbostian/get-started:v2Now when listing all of the Docker images on my system, you’ll see this:2 tags for image 4f98c0d6d5d4You can attach any number of tags to the same image, and you can remove the original image name (friendlyhello:latest), just like any other tag.

The image itself exists as long as there is at least one tag that references it.

Docker Operations Through TagsNow that the we have attached metadata to the image with the docker tag command, we can perform operations that reference the information it contains.

For instance, if you want to push this to your private registry, you would just use the Docker push command, specifying the tag that we just created:docker push 192.

168.

1.

55:5000/jbostian/get-started:v2If you wanted to push the same image up to Dockerhub, you would just use the other tag, since Dockerhub is the default repository:> docker push friendlyhelloThe push refers to repository [docker.

io/library/friendlyhello]6b0b6a9d6ac6: Preparing b3b808bbd18e: Preparing 53c7a2113e4a: Preparing b290994a0abd: Preparing a33a8a09e38e: Preparing c1a7ac589708: Waiting 24fd38911d96: Waiting denied: requested access to the resource is deniedWhy did this happen?.Because the default friendlyhello repository in the tag didn’t contain a prefix that you have write authority to.

Remember, this is like a path for your Dockerhub userid.

Your userid at the target registry will have write access to any repository name that begins with the name of your user — like a home directory.

If I were going to push this up to Dockerhub, I would need to tag the image with a prefix to the name that represents a repository I have write access to.

My Dockerhub userid is jbostian, so I would tag and push the image like this:Tagging and pushing an image to my Dockerhub repositoryWithout the jbostian prefix, it’s as if I were trying to write something to Dockerhub’s root directory, which I’m not allowed to do.

I could have specified any other repository I wanted, as long as I have write access to it.

Docker’s pull and run commands operate in a similar way using tag information like this.

Final ThoughtsMost command line interfaces would gather necessary information to satisfy a request through positional arguments and/or named parameters.

This is the first interface I remember using that attaches this kind of information to the object which is being acted upon.

There is of course no right or wrong way to do this, but if you’re like me, you may have struggled a bit as a Docker noob.

Once you get used to it works as well as any other CLI.

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