UID 1000 not defined in /etc/passwd in AAKE v24 docker images

[Michael A. Lowry]

Since v24, AAKE containers in Kubernetes run as UID 1000. (Prior to v24, they ran as root.)

For some reason though, the UID 1000 is not defined in the /etc/passwd file in these containers. This does not usually cause a problem for the AAKE server processes. However, it can cause other problems.

For example, we recently tried to use the DB connection test program ucdbconntest, and discovered that it fails due to an inability to look up the details of the user.

./ucdbconntest -C${AUTOMIC_ODBC_SQLDRIVERCONNECT}
** Database error 3590 'local user with ID 1000 does not exist'

Has anyone else observed this problem?

[Michael A. Lowry]

I used Dive to inspect the ae-wp image. One of the layers of the image includes a CMD that runs (among other things):

groupadd -r -g 1010 default

useradd -m -u 1010 -r -g default -c "default user" default

I was not able to find corresponding commands to add GID or UID 1000.

[Michael A. Lowry]

I opened a ticket with Tricise. They opened a ticket with Broadcom. Eventually we'll get an answer.

[Michael A. Lowry]

Broadcom declined to consider as a bug the fact that UID/GID 1000 are missing from the ae-wp image in AAKE.

I found I could work around this limitation by copying the program and several shared libraries upon which it depends to a directory where the pod user 1000 has write access, such as /tmp. E.g., 

cd /usr/server/bin
cp ucdbconntest uc.msl ucupgs.so libsysapi.so libuc001.so libucudb32.so libunicode.so libzu00132.so libzugss.so /tmp
cd /tmp
./ucdbconntest -C"${AUTOMIC_ODBC_SQLDRIVERCONNECT}"
...

The particular libraries required likely vary by DB type.

[Michael A. Lowry]

I have it on good authority that UID/GID 1000 will be included in the images in a future release. This should make troubleshooting running AAKE pods somewhat easier.