ERDDAP on Docker

A feature full Tomcat (SSL over APR, etc.) running ERDDAP

Most recent versions:

• axiom/docker-erddap:latest-jdk21-openjdk (2.24)
• axiom/docker-erddap:2.24-jdk21-openjdk
• axiom/docker-erddap:2.23-jdk17-openjdk

See all versions available here. As always, consult the ERDDAP Changes documentation before upgrading your server.

Use any of the latest-* images with caution as they follow the upstream image, and is not as thoroughly tested as tagged images.

Dependabot is used to automatically make PRs to update the upstream image (.github/dependabot.yml).

Quickstart

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 axiom/docker-erddap:latest-jdk21-openjdk

Running ERDDAP CLI Tools

GenerateDatasetsXml

docker run --rm -it \
  -v $(pwd)/logs:/erddapData/logs \
  --workdir /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/erddap/WEB-INF \
  axiom/docker-erddap:latest \
  bash GenerateDatasetsXml.sh -verbose

or, generate a basic dataset configuration without input for later customization

./make-dataset.xml /path/to/your.csv EDDTableFromAsciiFiles > /path/to/your-dataset.xml

Configuration

Tomcat

See these instructions for configuring Tomcat from the Tomcat image this image borrows from (unidata/tomcat-docker).

CORS

The Tomcat configuration used by this image enables the Apache Tomcat CORS filter by default. To disable it (maybe you want to handle CORS uniformly in a proxying webserver?), set environment variable DISABLE_CORS to 1.

ERDDAP

Any number of these options can be taken to configure your ERDDAP container instance to your liking.

1. Mount your own content/erddap directory:

   docker run \
       -p 8080:8080 \
       -v /path/to/your/erddap/directory:/usr/local/tomcat/content/erddap \
       ... \
       axiom/docker-erddap

   Your content directory should contain a setup.xml and dataset.xml file. It can also include CSS assets that you reference in your custom setup.xml file.

   If you just want to change setup.xml and dataset.xml, you can mount them individually:

   $ docker run \
       -p 8080:8080 \
       -v /path/to/your/setup.xml:/usr/local/tomcat/content/erddap/setup.xml \
       -v /path/to/your/datasets.xml:/usr/local/tomcat/content/erddap/datasets.xml \
       ... \
       axiom/docker-erddap

   If you mount setup.xml file make sure to set <bigParentDirectory>/erddapData/</bigParentDirectory>

2. Configure using environmental variables

   You can set environmental variables to configure ERDDAP's setup.xml since version 2.14. See the ERDDAP documentation for details. This can be very useful so you don't need to mount a custom setup.xml file into your container. If taking this approach you should look into setting the following ERDDAP config options:

   • ERDDAP_baseUrl
   • ERDDAP_baseHttpsUrl
   • ERDDAP_flagKeyKey
   • ERDDAP_emailEverythingTo
   • ERDDAP_emailFromAddress
   • ERDDAP_emailUserName
   • ERDDAP_emailPassword
   • ERDDAP_emailSmtpHost
   • ERDDAP_emailSmtpPort
   • ERDDAP_adminInstitution
   • ERDDAP_adminInstitutionUrl
   • ERDDAP_adminIndividualName
   • ERDDAP_adminPosition
   • ERDDAP_adminPhone
   • ERDDAP_adminAddress
   • ERDDAP_adminCity
   • ERDDAP_adminStateOrProvince
   • ERDDAP_adminPostalCode
   • ERDDAP_adminCountry
   • ERDDAP_adminEmail

   For example:

   docker run \
       -p 8080:8080 \
       -e ERDDAP_baseURL="http://localhost:8080" \
       -e ERDDAP_adminEmail="[email protected]" \
       axiom/docker-erddap

   Depending on your container environment, it may pass in it's own environment variables relating to your resources. Potentially there could be a collision with the ERDDAP_* config variables if any of your resources start with ERDDAP.

3. Configure using a shell script

   You can mount a file called config.sh to ${CATALINA_HOME}/bin/config.sh that sets any ERDDAP configuration environmental variables you want to use. This is sourced in the container-provided setenv.sh file and and all variables will be exported to be used by ERDDAP for configuration. These will take precedence over environmental variable specified when running the container (see above).

   $ docker run \
       -p 8080:8080 \
       -e ERDDAP_adminEmail="[email protected]" \
       -v /path/to/your/config.sh:/usr/local/tomcat/bin/config.sh \
       ... \
       axiom/docker-erddap

   where config.sh contains any of the ERDDAP environmental configuration variables:

   ERDDAP_adminEmail="[email protected]"

   You can set any number of configuration variables in the config.sh.

   ERDDAP_bigParentDirectory="/erddapData/"
   ERDDAP_baseUrl="http://localhost:8080"
   ERDDAP_baseHttpsUrl="https://localhost:8443"
   ERDDAP_flagKeyKey="73976bb0-9cd4-11e3-a5e2-0800200c9a66"
   
   ERDDAP_emailEverythingTo="[email protected]"
   ERDDAP_emailDailyReportTo="[email protected]"
   ERDDAP_emailFromAddress="[email protected]"
   ERDDAP_emailUserName=""
   ERDDAP_emailPassword=""
   ERDDAP_emailProperties=""
   ERDDAP_emailSmtpHost=""
   ERDDAP_emailSmtpPort=""
   
   ERDDAP_adminInstitution="Axiom Docker Install"
   ERDDAP_adminInstitutionUrl="https://github.com/axiom-data-science/docker-erddap"
   ERDDAP_adminIndividualName="Axiom Docker Install"
   ERDDAP_adminPosition="Software Engineer"
   ERDDAP_adminPhone="555-555-5555"
   ERDDAP_adminAddress="123 Irrelevant St."
   ERDDAP_adminCity="Nowhere"
   ERDDAP_adminStateOrProvince="AK"
   ERDDAP_adminPostalCode="99504"
   ERDDAP_adminCountry="USA"
   ERDDAP_adminEmail="[email protected]"

4. Mount your own bigParentDirectory:

   docker run \
       -p 8080:8080 \
       -v /path/to/your/erddap/bigParentDirectory:/erddapData \
       ... \
       axiom/docker-erddap

   This is highly recommended, or nothing will persist across container restarts (logs/cache/etc.)

5. Specify the amount of heap memory (using Java's Xms and Xmx) to be allocated:

   docker run \
       -p 8080:8080 \
       --env ERDDAP_MEMORY=10G
       ... \
       axiom/docker-erddap

   You may also explicity set ERDDAP_MIN_MEMORY and ERDDAP_MAX_MEMORY value (these map to Xms and Xmx respectively), but generally the best practice is to set these to the same value to prevent costly heap resizing at runtime.

   docker run \
       -p 8080:8080 \
       --env ERDDAP_MIN_MEMORY=8G --env ERDDAP_MAX_MEMORY=8G
       ... \
       axiom/docker-erddap

   Alternatively, you can set ERDDAP_MAX_RAM_PERCENTAGE set the maximum Java heap size to a percentage of the memory available to the container. This option sets the JVM option -XX:MaxRAMPercentage. For example, to limit the container's memory to 10GB and allow the Java heap size to use 90% of that amount:

   docker run \
       -p 8080:8080 \
       --memory 10g \
       --env ERDDAP_MAX_RAM_PERCENTAGE=90 \
       ... \
       axiom/docker-erddap

datasets.d mode - EXPERIMENTAL

Typically ERDDAP is configured with a single datasets.xml configuration file describing all datasets to be served by ERDDAP, plus some global configuration options. This file is described in detail in the official ERDDAP documentation.

docker-erddap provides an alternative datasets.d mode, where datasets.xml dataset elements can be stored in separate files inside a datasets.d directory. At startup time, the /datasets.d directory is scanned for any files ending in .xml, and matching files are concatenated (sorted by file path inside /datasets.d) into a generated datasets.xml file (specifically, an empty <erddapDatasets /> element).

In this mode, top level datasets.xml elements like <cacheMinutes>, <standardLicense>, etc can be configured using ERDDAP_DATASET_* environment variables. These behave much like the ERDDAP_* environment variables which affect setup.xml values (see the ERDDAP docs for more details), but affect top level datasets.xml values instead. For example, to set the standardLicense:

docker run -d -v $(pwd)/datasets.d:/datasets.d:ro \
  -e ERDDAP_DATASETS_standardLicense="<h1>Use as you wish</h1>" \
  --name erddap
  axiom/docker-erddap

Note that in this mode, the datasets.xml file in the ERDDAP content directory (/usr/local/tomcat/content/erddap) is replaced by the generated datasets.xml. A backup of the original datasets.xml is created if one doesn't already exist.

Consequently, when using datasets.d mode it is not necessary to mount the ERDDAP content directory at all. The contents of datasets.d provide all of the dataset configuration, and any top level datasets.xml configuration is performed through `ERDDAP_DATASETS_* env vars.

For an example of running with datasets.d mode, see the docker-compose example in examples.

Generation of datasets.xml is handled in a script (datasets.d.sh) which prints to stdout and can be tested outside of docker-erddap initialization.

Example:

ERDDAP_DATASETS_cacheMinutes=20 ./datasets.d.sh -d examples/datasets.d

Elegantly removing datasets in datasets.d mode

ERDDAP has a specific process to remove a previously served dataset:

• Edit the dataset's datasets.xml element and set the active attribute to false.
• Allow ERDDAP to detect the inactive dataset on the next update (or set a reload flag detect the change immediately)
• Once ERDDAP has removed the dataset, remove the dataset's datasets.xml element (or leave as-is with active="false")

Failure to follow this process will result in "orphan" datasets in the ERDDAP configuration.

To allow datasets.d mode to automatically detect removed datasets (dataset ids in the running ERDDAP configuration but not present in the newly generated datasets.xml), you can set environment variable DATASETSD_MARK_REMOVED_DATASETS_INACTIVE=1 or pass the -i flag to ./datasets.d.sh when running manually. This behavior may become the default in the future.

Initialization scripts (/init.d) - EXPERIMENTAL

Additional configuration can be performed by placing executable files and/or shell scripts in /init.d. These executables will be run on every container start up, so they must be idempotent. This functionality is inspired by the postgres Docker image's /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d.

Example:

#remove .hdf and .nc files from range request exclusion
mkdir -p init.d
cat << 'EOF' > init.d/10-remove-hdf-nc-range-request-exclusion.sh
sed -i 's/.hdf, .nc, //g' ${CATALINA_HOME}/webapps/erddap/WEB-INF/classes/gov/noaa/pfel/erddap/util/messages.xml
EOF

chmod +x init.d/10-remove-hdf-nc-range-request-exclusion.sh

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 -v $(pwd)/init.d:/init.d:ro --name erddap axiom/docker-erddap

Log Consolidation - EXPERIMENTAL

ERDDAP writes logs to a logs/log.txt file relative to ERDDAP's bigParentDirectory. The log format doesn't adhere to a standard logging format and isn't easily parsable. The logs also don't provide timestamps for when the logs messages were written. To enhance the logging experience when using this docker image you can run a sidecar rsyslog container that will:

• Consolidate the log files from ERDDAP and Tomcat (both application and access)
• Add a timestamp to the ERDDAP logs
• Filter out some ERDDAP log "noise" (opinionated)
• Send the consolidated and filtered log messages to stdout

For an example of running with a sidecar rsyslog container, see the docker-compose example in examples. The supporting rsyslog configuration files are located in rsyslog. Please note that this requires both the ERDDAP bigParentDirectory and Tomcat's log directory to be bind mounted to the host from the ERDDAP container or managed in Docker named volumes mounted to both the ERDDAP and rsyslog containers.

Example consolidated log:

erddap-rsyslogd_1  | [TOMCAT] 08-Jul-2022 04:44:14.004 INFO [main] org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol.start Starting ProtocolHandler ["http-nio-8080"]
erddap-rsyslogd_1  | [TOMCAT] 08-Jul-2022 04:44:14.011 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start Server startup in 3582 ms
...
erddap-rsyslogd_1  | [ERDDAP] 2022-07-08T04:44:19Z Major LoadDatasets Time Series: MLD    Datasets Loaded            Requests (median times in ms)              Number of Threads      MB    Open
erddap-rsyslogd_1  |   timestamp                    time   nTry nFail nTotal  nSuccess (median) nFail (median) memFail tooMany  tomWait inotify other  inUse  Files
erddap-rsyslogd_1  | ----------------------------  -----   -----------------  ------------------------------------------------  ---------------------  -----  -----
erddap-rsyslogd_1  |   2022-07-08T04:44:18+00:00      1s      1     0      2         1 (     8)     0 (     0)       0       0       10       1    17     44     0%
...
erddap-rsyslogd_1  | [ACCESS] 127.0.0.1 - - [08/Jul/2022:04:44:17 +0000] "GET /erddap/index.html HTTP/1.1" 200 25268
erddap-rsyslogd_1  | [ACCESS] 127.0.0.1 - - [08/Jul/2022:04:44:27 +0000] "GET /erddap/index.html HTTP/1.1" 200 25268