Docker

You can get a Dolt Docker container using our official Docker images. Both images support linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 platforms and are updated on every release of Dolt. Older versions are also available, and tagged with the Dolt version they contain. The source of the Dockerfiles can be found here

Docker Image for Dolt CLI

The Dolt CLI Docker image is useful if you need a container that already has the Dolt CLI installed on it. For example, this image is a good fit if you are performing data analysis and want to work in a containerized environment, or if you are building an application that needs to invoke Dolt from the command line and also needs to run in a container.

Running this image is equivalent to running the dolt command. You can get the latest version with latest tag, or you can get a specific, older version by using the Dolt version you want as the image's tag (e.g. 0.50.8).

> docker pull dolthub/dolt:latest
> docker run dolthub/dolt:latest version
dolt version 1.5.0
>
> docker pull dolthub/dolt:1.4.2
> docker run dolthub/dolt:1.4.2 version
dolt version 1.4.2

Docker Image for Dolt SQL-Server

The Dolt sql-server Docker image creates a container with Dolt installed and starts a Dolt SQL server when running the container. It is similar to MySQL's Docker image. Running this image without any arguments is equivalent to running dolt sql-server --host 0.0.0.0 --port 3306 command locally, which is the default settings for the server in the container.

To check out supported options for dolt sql-server, you can run the image with --help flag.

> docker run dolthub/dolt-sql-server:latest --help

Connect to the server in the container from the host system

From the host system, to connect to a server running in a container, we need to map a port on the host system to the port our sql-server is running on in the container.

We also need a user account that has permission to connect to the server from the host system's address. By default, as of Dolt version 1.46.0, the root superuser is limited to connections from localhost. This is a security feature to prevent unauthorized access to the server. If you don't want to log in to the container and then connect to your sql-server, you can set the DOLT_ROOT_HOST and DOLT_ROOT_PASSWORD environment variables to control how the root superuser is initialized. When the Dolt sql-server container is started, it will ensure the root superuser is configured according to those environment variables.

In our example below, we're using DOLT_ROOT_HOST to override the host of the root superuser account to % in order to allow any host to connect to our server and log in as root. We're also using DOLT_ROOT_PASSWORD to override the default, empty password to specify a password for the root account. This is strongly advised for security when allowing the root account to connect from any host.

> docker run -e DOLT_ROOT_PASSWORD=secret2 -e DOLT_ROOT_HOST=% -p 3307:3306 dolthub/dolt-sql-server:latest

If we run the command above with -d or switch to a separate window we can connect with MySQL:

> mysql --host 0.0.0.0 -P 3307 -u root -p secret2

Define configuration for the server

You can either define server configuration as command line arguments, or you can use yaml configuration file. For the command line argument definition you can simply define arguments at the end of the docker command. See the Dolt server configuration documentation for more details and available options.

> docker run -p 3307:3306 dolthub/dolt-sql-server:latest -l debug --no-auto-commit

Or, we can mount a local directory to specific directories in the container. The special directory for server configuration is /etc/dolt/servercfg.d/. You can only have one .yaml configuration file in this directory. If there are multiple, the default configuration will be used. If the location of configuration file was /Users/jennifer/docker/server/config.yaml, this is how to use -v flag which mounts /Users/jennifer/docker/server/ local directory to /etc/dolt/servercfg.d/ directory in the container.

> docker run -p 3307:3306 -v /Users/jennifer/docker/server:/etc/dolt/servercfg.d dolthub/dolt-sql-server:latest

The Dolt configuration and data directories can be configured similarly:

• The dolt configuration directory is /etc/dolt/doltcfg.d/ There should be one .json dolt configuration file. It will replace the global dolt configuration file in the container.

• We set the location of where data to be stored to default location at /var/lib/dolt/ in the container. The data directory does not need to be defined in server configuration for container, but to store the data on the host system, it can also be mounted to this default location.

> docker run -p 3307:3306 -v /Users/jennifer/docker/databases:/var/lib/dolt dolthub/dolt-sql-server:latest

There will be directory called /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d inside the container, and all appropriate files including .sh or .sql files. They will be run after server has started. This is useful for such as setting up your database with importing data by providing SQL dump file.

Let's look at an example

Here is how I set up my directories to be mounted. I have three directories to mount in a directory called shared,

• databases is empty and is used for storing my data,

• dolt has a single .json file that stores my dolt configuration

• server has a single .yaml file that stores my server configuration

shared > ls
databases	dolt		server
shared > docker run -e DOLT_ROOT_HOST='%' -p 3307:3306 -v $PWD/server:/etc/dolt/servercfg.d -v $PWD/dolt:/etc/dolt/doltcfg.d -v $PWD/databases:/var/lib/dolt dolthub/dolt-sql-server:latest 
2022-10-27 18:07:51+00:00 [Note] [Entrypoint]: Entrypoint script for Dolt Server 1.5.0 starting.
2022-10-27 18:07:51+00:00 [Note] [Entrypoint]: Checking for config provided in /etc/dolt/doltcfg.d
2022-10-27 18:07:51+00:00 [Note] [Entrypoint]: /etc/dolt/doltcfg.d/config.json file is found
2022-10-27 18:07:51+00:00 [Note] [Entrypoint]: Checking for config provided in /etc/dolt/servercfg.d
2022-10-27 18:07:51+00:00 [Note] [Entrypoint]: /etc/dolt/servercfg.d/config.yaml file is found


2022-10-27 18:07:51+00:00 [Warn] [Entrypoint]: /usr/local/bin/docker-entrypoint.sh: ignoring /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/*
2022-10-27 18:07:51+00:00 [Note] [Entrypoint]: Dolt Server 1.5.0 is started.
Starting server with Config HP="0.0.0.0:3306"|T="28800000"|R="false"|L="debug"

We can see both config files were used successfully.

We can verify that we have the data we create through the server in our local directory we mounted.

> mysql --host 0.0.0.0 -P 3307 -uroot
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 1
Server version: 5.7.9-Vitess 

Copyright (c) 2000, 2022, Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> create database doltdb;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.08 sec)

mysql> use doltdb;
Database changed
mysql> create table mytable(pk int primary key, col1 varchar(20));
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)

mysql> insert into mytable values (1, 'first row'),(2, 'second row');
Query OK, 2 row affected (0.02 sec)

mysql> exit

We can check for directory doltdb created in our local /shared/databases directory.

shared > cd databases && ls
doltdb
databases > cd doltdb && dolt sql -q "SELECT * FROM mytable"
+----+------------+
| pk | col1       |
+----+------------+
| 1  | first row  |
| 2  | second row |
+----+------------+

You can verify it has the data we created by using Dolt CLI Docker image if you do not have Dolt installed locally.

shared > cd databases && ls
doltdb
databases > docker run -v $PWD/doltdb:/doltdb dolthub/dolt:latest sql -q "USE doltdb; SELECT * FROM mytable;"
Database changed
+----+------------+
| pk | col1       |
+----+------------+
| 1  | first row  |
| 2  | second row |
+----+------------+

Server liveness and readiness checks

When running dolthub/dolt-sql-server in an environment like Kubernetes, liveness and readiness checks can be configured with something like:

    livenessProbe:
      exec:
        command: ["dolt", "--host", "127.0.0.1", "--port", "3306", "--no-tls", "sql", "-q", "select current_timestamp();"]
      initialDelaySeconds: 60
      periodSeconds: 10
    readinessProbe:
      exec:
        command: ["dolt", "--host", "127.0.0.1", "--port", "3306", "--no-tls", "sql", "-q", "select current_timestamp();"]
      initialDelaySeconds: 40
      periodSeconds: 10

This above configuration uses the dolt client within the server container to execute queries against the live server.