Populating a Containers environment values with mounted configMap in Kubernetes - kubernetes

Question

I'm currently learning Kubernetes and recently learnt about using ConfigMaps for a Containers environment variables.
Let's say I have the following simple ConfigMap:
apiVersion: v1
data:
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: password
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
creationTimestamp: null
name: mycm
I know that a container of some deployment can consume this environment variable via:
kubectl set env deployment mydb --from=configmap/mycm
or by specifying it manually in the manifest like so:
containers:
- env:
- name: MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD
valueFrom:
configMapKeyRef:
key: MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD
name: mycm
However, this isn't what I am after, since I'd to manually change the environment variables each time the ConfigMap changes.
I am aware that mounting a ConfigMap to the Pod's volume allows for the auto-updating of ConfigMap values. I'm currently trying to find a way to set a Container's environment variables to those stored in the mounted config map.
So far I have the following YAML manifest:
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
creationTimestamp: null
labels:
app: mydb
name: mydb
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
app: mydb
strategy: {}
template:
metadata:
creationTimestamp: null
labels:
app: mydb
spec:
containers:
- image: mariadb
name: mariadb
resources: {}
args: ["export MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=$(cat /etc/config/MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD)"]
volumeMounts:
- name: config-volume
mountPath: /etc/config
env:
- name: MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD
value: temp
volumes:
- name: config-volume
configMap:
name: mycm
status: {}
I'm attempting to set the MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD to some temporary value, and then update it to mounted value as soon as the container starts via args: ["export MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=$(cat /etc/config/MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD)"]
As I somewhat expected, this didn't work, resulting in the following error:
/usr/local/bin/docker-entrypoint.sh: line 539: /export MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=$(cat /etc/config/MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD): No such file or directory
I assume this is because the volume is mounted after the entrypoint. I tried adding a readiness probe to wait for the mount but this didn't work either:
readinessProbe:
exec:
command: ["sh", "-c", "test -f /etc/config/MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD"]
initialDelaySeconds: 5
periodSeconds: 5
Is there any easy way to achieve what I'm trying to do, or is it impossible?

Answer 1

So I managed to find a solution, with a lot of inspiration from this answer.
Essentially, what I did was create a sidecar container based on the alpine K8s image that mounts the configmap and constantly watches for any changes, since the K8s API automatically updates the mounted configmap when the configmap is changed. This required the following script, watch_passwd.sh, which makes use of inotifywait to watch for changes and then uses the K8s API to rollout the changes accordingly:
update_passwd() {
kubectl delete secret mysql-root-passwd > /dev/null 2>&1
kubectl create secret generic mysql-root-passwd --from-file=/etc/config/MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD
}
update_passwd
while true
do
inotifywait -e modify "/etc/config/MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD"
update_passwd
kubectl rollout restart deployment $1
done
The Dockerfile is then:
FROM docker.io/alpine/k8s:1.25.6
RUN apk update && apk add inotify-tools
COPY watch_passwd.sh .
After building the image (locally in this case) as mysidecar, I create the ServiceAccount, Role, and RoleBinding outlined here, adding rules for deployments so that they can be restarted by the sidecar.
After this, I piece it all together to create the following YAML Manifest (note that imagePullPolicy is set to Never, since I created the image locally):
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
creationTimestamp: null
labels:
app: mydb
name: mydb
spec:
replicas: 3
selector:
matchLabels:
app: mydb
strategy: {}
template:
metadata:
creationTimestamp: null
labels:
app: mydb
spec:
serviceAccountName: secretmaker
containers:
- image: mysidecar
name: mysidecar
imagePullPolicy: Never
command:
- /bin/sh
- -c
- |
./watch_passwd.sh $(DEPLOYMENT_NAME)
env:
- name: DEPLOYMENT_NAME
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.labels['app']
volumeMounts:
- name: config-volume
mountPath: /etc/config
- image: mariadb
name: mariadb
resources: {}
envFrom:
- secretRef:
name: mysql-root-passwd
volumes:
- name: config-volume
configMap:
name: mycm
status: {}
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
name: secretmaker
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: Role
metadata:
labels:
app: mydb
name: secretmaker
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
resources: ["secrets"]
verbs: ["create", "get", "delete", "list"]
- apiGroups: ["apps"]
resources: ["deployments"]
verbs: ["get", "list", "watch", "update", "patch"]
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: RoleBinding
metadata:
labels:
app: mydb
name: secretmaker
roleRef:
apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
kind: Role
name: secretmaker
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
name: secretmaker
namespace: default
---
It all works as expected! Hopefully this is able to help someone out in the future. Also, if anybody comes across this and has a better solution please feel free to let me know :)