HomeCentr - Portainer agent

This docker image is a repack of the original portainer agent compliant with the HomeCenter docker images standard (S6 overlay, privilege drop etc.).

Usage

version: "3.7"
services:
  portainer-agent:
    build: .
    image: homecentr/portainer-agent
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      PORTAINER_AGENT_ARGS: ""   
    ports:
      - "9001:9001/tcp"
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock

Environment variables

Name	Default value	Description
PUID	7077	UID of the user portainer agent should be running as. The UID must have sufficient rights to read from the Docker socket.
PGID	7077	GID of the user portainer agent should be running as. You must set the PUID if you want to set the PGID variable.
PORTAINER_AGENT_ARGS		Command line arguments to the portainer-agent executable.
FIRST_HEALTHCHECK_TIMEOUT	20 (seconds)	Sets how long the start script will wait for the first execution of healthcheck (see the explanation below). If you see the container is restarting and the last message in output is "Signal from healthcheck not received in time, failing the execution...", try increasing this timeout.

Exposed ports

Port	Protocol	Description
9001	TCP	Agent API

Volumes

Container path	Description
/data	portainer agent data

Make sure you mount the Docker socket.

Healthcheck - why is it so complicated...

When running in a Swarm cluster, Portainer agent does a DNS lookup to discover other agents. If the container has healthcheck, the DNS record for the container is only added to the Swarm's internal DNS when the healthcheck succeeds. This creates a bit of chicken and egg problem. Healthcheck waits for the agent to start and the agent requires the healthcheck to succeed before it's actually started.

Workaround:

• The healtcheck starts as soon as the container starts and the first execution immedialy succeeds
• Swarm adds record for the container into the internal DNS
• Bash script which is used to start the Portainer agent waits until it gets a signal from healthcheck and only then it actually starts the agent

Security

The container is regularly scanned for vulnerabilities and updated. Further info can be found in the Security tab.

Container user

The container supports privilege drop. Even though the container starts as root, it will use the permissions only to perform the initial set up. The portainer process runs as UID/GID provided in the PUID and PGID environment variables.

⚠️ Do not change the container user directly using the user Docker compose property or using the --user argument. This would break the privilege drop logic.

💡 To grant a user the permission to read Docker socket, you can set the PGID to the ID of the docker group on host.