Updating the QCrBox Container Registry

This guide explains how to tag and push Docker images to QCrBox's Azure Container Registry (ACR), using the Azure CLI.

Prerequisites

To push images to QCrBox's Azure Container Registry (ACR), you need to have the Azure CLI installed and configured and to have access to QCrBox's Azure subscription/portal. If you do not have the Azure CLI installed, follow the official installation guide for your operating system.

Once it is installed, you need to log into Azure and pick the subscription you want to link. Open your terminal and run:

az login

This will open a browser window for authentication. After logging in, you can verify your account with:

az account show

Once you are logged in, you need to also log into the ACR using:

az acr login --name qcrbox

Uploading/updating an image

Assuming your image is built locally (e.g., qcrbox/registry:latest), you need to tag the local image with the address of the Azure Container Registry (ACR) before pushing it:

docker tag qcrbox/registry:latest qcrbox.azurecr.io/qcrbox-registry:latest

The qcrbox.azurecr.io part is the hostname of the QCrBox ACR. Docker uses this address to know where to push (or pull) the image. If you do not tag your image with the full registry address, Docker will not know to associate it with the ACR, and the push will fail or go to the wrong place. Always use the full registry address when preparing images for upload to Azure.

Once tagged, we can push the image to the ACR:

docker push qcrbox.azurecr.io/qcrbox-olex2-linux:latest

You should see the upload progress and a confirmation when the push is complete.

List images in the QCrBox ACR

To see images in the ACR:

az acr repository list --name qcrbox --output table

To list tags for a specific image:

az acr repository show-tags --name qcrbox --repository qcrbox-registry --output table

Using pre-built images

You can use the qcb tool to start services with pre-built images. For example, to start the olex2 service with the production image:

qcb up --prebuilt-images olex2

This command will use the production Docker Compose file for olex2 and pull the image from the ACR if it is not already present locally. To enable an application to pull form the ACR, you must include a docker-compose.*.prebuilt.yml file in its directory in QCrBox/services/applications/. Instead of using the Dockerfile to build the image, you instead use the image from the ACR. Below is an example of what the relevant section of this file might look like:

services:
  olex2:
    image: ${QCRBOX_DOCKER_REPO:?Must set env var QCRBOX_DOCKER_REPO}/olex2-linux:${QCRBOX_DOCKER_TAG:?Must set env var QCRBOX_DOCKER_TAG}  # Pulls from the QCrBox ACR
    volumes:
      - ${QCRBOX_SHARED_FILES_DIR_HOST_PATH:?Must set env var QCRBOX_SHARED_FILES_DIR_HOST_PATH}:${QCRBOX_SHARED_FILES_DIR_CONTAINER_PATH:?Must set env var QCRBOX_SHARED_FILES_DIR_CONTAINER_PATH}
    networks:
      - qcrbox-net
    ports:
      - "${QCRBOX_BIND_ADDRESS}:${QCRBOX_OLEX2_LINUX_PORT:?Must set env var QCRBOX_OLEX2_LINUX_PORT}:8080"
    depends_on:
      qcrbox-registry:
        condition: service_healthy
    # then you can configure environment variables and whatever else is required

This requires the following environment variables:

QCRBOX_DOCKER_REPO=qcrbox.azurecr.io
QCRBOX_DOCKER_TAG=latest