Running Kiwi TCMS as a Docker container¶

In order to run Kiwi TCMS as a production instance you will need Docker and docker-compose. Refer to their documentation about download and installation options.

Pull or Build Docker image¶

You can download the official Kiwi TCMS Docker image by running:

docker pull kiwitcms/kiwi

Alternatively you can build an image yourself by running:

make docker-image

this will create a Docker image with the latest Kiwi TCMS version. By default the image tag will be kiwitcms/kiwi:latest.

Note

While Kiwi TCMS uses git tags when releasing new versions we do not provide versioned docker images via Docker Hub!

Start Docker compose¶

Before starting Kiwi TCMS you need to clone the git repo:

git clone https://github.com/kiwitcms/Kiwi.git

Then you can start Kiwi TCMS by executing:

cd Kiwi/
docker-compose up -d

Your Kiwi TCMS instance will be accessible at https://localhost.

The above command will create two containers:

A web container based on the latest Kiwi TCMS image
A DB container based on the official centos/mariadb image

docker-compose will also create two volumes for persistent data storage: kiwi_db_data and kiwi_uploads.

Note

Kiwi TCMS container will bind to all network addresses on the system. To use it across the organization simply distribute the FQDN of the system running the Docker container to all associates.

Initial configuration of running container¶

You need to create the database schema by executing:

docker exec -it kiwi_web /Kiwi/manage.py migrate

Note

By default the first registered account will become superuser!

Warning

This requires working email because the account must be activated via confirmation link sent to the email address defined during registration.

If email is not configured or you prefer the command line use:

docker exec -it kiwi_web /Kiwi/manage.py createsuperuser

Upgrading¶

To upgrade running Kiwi TCMS containers execute the following commands:

cd Kiwi/
git pull # to refresh docker-compose.yml
docker-compose down
# make docker-image if you build from source or
docker pull kiwitcms/kiwi  # to fetch latest version from Docker Hub
docker pull centos/mariadb # to fetch the latest version for MariaDB
docker-compose up -d
docker exec -it kiwi_web /Kiwi/manage.py migrate

Note

Uploads and database data should stay intact because they are split into separate volumes which makes upgrading very easy. However you may want to back these up before upgrading!

SSL configuration¶

By default Kiwi TCMS is served via HTTPS. docker-compose.yml is configured with a default self-signed certificate stored in etc/kiwitcms/ssl/. If you want to use different SSL certificate you need to update the localhost.key and localhost.crt files in that directory or bind-mount your own SSL directory to /Kiwi/ssl inside the docker container!

More information about generating your own self-signed certificates can be found at https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Https.

Customization¶

You can edit docker-compose.yml to mount the local file local_settings.py inside the running Docker container:

volumes:
    - uploads:/Kiwi/uploads
    - ./local_settings.py:/venv/lib64/python3.6/site-packages/tcms/settings/local_settings.py

You can override any default settings in this way!

You can also build your own customized version of Kiwi TCMS by adjusting the contents of Dockerfile and then:

docker build -t my_org/my_kiwi:<version> .

Note

Make sure to modify docker-compose.yml to use your customized image instead the default kiwitcms/kiwi:latest!

Warning

Some older versions of docker do not allow mounting of files between the host and the container, they only allow mounting directories and volumes. The stock docker versions on CentOS 7 and RHEL 7 do this. You may see an error similar to:

ERROR: for kiwi_web Cannot start service web:

OCI runtime create failed: container_linux.go:348:

starting container process caused “process_linux.go:402:

container init caused “rootfs_linux.go:58: mounting: “/root/kiwi/local_settings.py” to rootfs “/var/lib/docker/overlay2 ….

In this case you will either have to upgrade your docker version or COPY the desired files and rebuild the docker image!

Troubleshooting¶

The Kiwi TCMS container will print HTTPD logs on the docker console!

Warning

You must start the containers in the foreground with docker-compose up, e.g. without the -d option in order to see their logs!

In case you see a 500 Internal Server Error page and the error log does not provide a traceback you should configure the DEBUG setting to True and restart the docker container. If your changes are picked up correctly you should see an error page with detailed information about the error instead of the default 500 error page.

When reporting issues please copy the relevant traceback as plain text into your reports!