Lab 1: Run a pipeline to build NGINX Plus images

1. Double-click on the GitHub Desktop shortcut on the desktop. It will open up the GitHub Desktop Client application. GitHub Desktop client is an excellent easy to use tool to manage your code on git repositories. GitHub Desktop is developed by GitHub, Inc. but can be used on any git-based project

   

2. Once GitHub Desktop Client is open, verify in the upper left corner that nginx-plus-dockerfiles is selected as the current repository. If it is not, click the drop-down button, and select nginx-plus-dockerfiles. Once you have the correct repository selected, click on Open in Visual Studio Code on the right side of the application

   

3. Inside the project folder, you will see many subfolders containing Dockerfiles to various builds of NGINX Plus on supported Linux distributions. Take some time to inspect the Docker files in different folders found in the project

   

4. Lets take a look at a Dockerfile. For example, look at the alpine3.10  folder, and in here, you will find the Dockerfile for a NGINX Plus build for Alpine Linux version 3.10. At the top of each Dockerfile, there is a line starting with the command FROM. The first FROM command is a critical Docker command that allows you to pull dependencies from other images. You typically find the next command sets the maintainer of the image, for reference and information. For more details on Dockerfile, check out Dockerfile Reference.

   Note

   NGINX Plus now supports the newer 3.17 version of Alpine linux. Let’s add the NGINX Plus build for Alpine Linux version 3.17 to our CI/CD pipeline.

5. Create a new folder called alpine3.17 in this project under the Dockerfiles root folder by copying the alpine3.10 folder:

   

right click on the Dockerfiles folder to paste the copy:

after pasting you should see an alpine3.10 copy folder:

right click on that folder and rename it to alpine3.17:

6. Let’s use the Alpine 3.10 Dockerfile copy as a template for our new Alpine 3.17 build. Go ahead and edit the Dockerfile in in our alpine3.17 folder, and update the FROM alpine:3.10 command to FROM alpine:3.17

   

7. Once you have edited Dockerfile and replaced the FROM alpine:3.10 command to FROM alpine:3.17, go ahead and save the file. You can navigate to file -> save or you can use the shortcut, CTRL+S.

Note

Now we have created a Dockerfile for Alpine 3.17 but still need to create a new Stage in our GitLab CI/CD Pipeline Configuration file, .gitlab-ci.yml

8. In order to build an Alpine 3.17 image, we also need to add a new stage to our .gitlab-ci.yml file for alpine3.17. Open this project’s GitLab CI/CD Pipeline Configuration file, .gitlab-ci.yml and find the stage labeled alpine3.10 (use Find Ctrl+F).

   1. Go ahead and Copy (Ctrl+C) this stage, and Paste (Ctrl+V) it underneath the existing alpine3.10 stage.
   2. Lastly, edit the stage label alpine3.10 to alpine3.17
   

   Important

   The correct indentation in a yaml file must be valid and make sure your .gitlab-ci.yml file looks like the example above.

9. Once you have edited .gitlab-ci.yml and created the new

   alpine3.17 stage, go ahead and save the file. You can navigate to file -> save or you can use the shortcut, CTRL+S.

10. Open or switch back to GitHub Desktop Client, and you will now see the changes made.

    Attention

    The GitHub Desktop Client has automatically tracked the changes that were made to the project folder, and is highlighting those exact changes, “2 changed file: .gitlab-ci.yml and Dockerfilesalpine3.17Dockerfile”

11. We are now going to push these changes to our repository on GitLab. In the lower-left of the GitHub, Desktop Client provide a Commit title and note before we can commit to master.

    You can see two boxes. Go ahead and type in the Summary field: "Alpine 3.17".

    Additionally, you can provide notes as well, type in the notes field: "NGINX Plus for Alpine 3.17"

    Once you fill in both boxes, click on Commit to Master and on the next screen, press “Push Origin” to push the new code commit to our git repository on Gitlab.

    

12. In Google Chrome, open up the nginx-plus-dockerfiles repository on Gitlab, https://gitlab.f5.local/f5-demo-lab/nginx-plus-dockerfiles or using the “nginx-plus-dockerfiles” shortcut provided. (udf/P@ssw0rd20)

Note

If the browser shows you a warning to indicate the connection is not secure

and shows an error code of “NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID”, this is due to the use of a self-signed certificate on the server. We will be using self-signed certificates for the purposes of this lab. However, you should use authentic certificates from known Certificate Authorities in any production environments. Click on Advanced, followed by the link to proceed to the site.

This will take us to the repository where we just pushed our modified Docker file to

13. On this nginx-plus-dockerfiles repository page, you will see the pipeline status icon next to the latest Commit SHA. When the pipeline currently in progress, you will see an orange icon (waiting to start), a blue circle (running), or a green check (passed). Hopefully, we don’t see a red icon, which indicates the pipeline has failed. We can click on the pipeline status icon to view the pipeline progress

    

    The next screen shows a high-level view of the pipeline triggered for this commit. We can click on the pipeline status icon on this screen to view the pipeline progress in greater detail.

    

14. After clicking on the pipeline status icon, we can view the full pipeline. As you can see, we can now see our pipeline: BUILD and CLEANUP. This pipeline was automatically triggered after we submitted our changes to Dockerfile (when we clicked ‘push origin.’) and we can see at a high level the stages in the pipeline progressing and the final result

    If all stages were successful, then we should have updated our Docker images up to our Docker container registry on this repository.

    

Attention

Stop: This is a good time to inspect the GitLab CI/CD Pipeline file, .gitlab-ci.yml, while waiting for the pipeline to complete.

1. Look at stage definitions near the top of the file, labled stages, and see there are two stages defined, build and cleanup, these stages run in order, sequentially, but the stages Continous Integration Jobs ($CI_JOB_NAME) e.g. alpine3.10, alpine3.17, etc., within those stages run in parallel.
2. Look at the CI_JOB_NAME, alpine3.10, and here like other jobs, we have set a varible $NAME with nginx-plus-$CI_JOB_NAME-$CI_PIPELINE_ID: This uses the Job name (alpine3.10) and the unique Pipeline ID of this run as the docker image name. Having a unique image name that references a build job allows us to roll back or deploy to a previously know good build

15. A Docker Container Registry is integrated into GitLab, and every project can have its own space to store its Docker images. We can see our image in the Package > Container Registry. On the Container Registry page, expand the title, and you will see a list of Docker images ready for use

    Here you should see your new alpine3.17 image