The oceanbase-ce docker image is just used for study or test;
Please use oceanbase-operator instead if you want to deploy oceanbase in k8s;
You should not deploy it with important data as it is not used in production environment.

Reasons:

The cluster contains only one instance, so there is no disaster tolerant ability;
It is very difficult to recover after failure because docker container cannot started while the oceanbase instance cannot start success, which means you lost the container and the data with it;
K8s can not restart a new pod because the container still exists after the observer process quit.

Prerequisite

Before you deploy oceanbase-ce docker, do the following checks:

Make sure that your machine has enough resource that can execute at least 2 phycical core and 8GB memory.
Your machine has installed these applications:

Application Recommended version Documentation

Docker Latest Docker Documentation
You have started the Docker service on your machine.

Application	Recommended version	Documentation
Docker	Latest	Docker Documentation

Start an OceanBase instance

To start an OceanBase instance, run this command:

# deploy mini instance
docker run -p 2881:2881 --name oceanbase-ce -d oceanbase/oceanbase-ce

# deploy an instance of the slim size according to the current container
docker run -p 2881:2881 --name oceanbase-ce -e MODE=slim -e OB_MEMORY_LIMIT=5G -v {init_sql_folder_path}:/root/boot/init.d -d oceanbase/oceanbase-ce

# deploy an instance of the largest size according to the current container
docker run -p 2881:2881 --name oceanbase-ce -e MODE=normal -d oceanbase/oceanbase-ce

# deploy a quick-start instance in any mode as desired to the current container
docker run -p 2881:2881 --name oceanbase-ce -e FASTBOOT=true -d oceanbase/oceanbase-ce

Two to five minutes are necessary for the boot procedure. To make sure that the boot procedure is successful, run this command:

$ docker logs oceanbase-ce | tail -1
boot success!

After started, there is an oceanbase instance. You can connect to the oceanbase by root user without password.

Connect to an OceanBase instance

oceanbase-ce image contains obclient (OceanBase Database client) and the default connection script ob-mysql.

docker exec -it oceanbase-ce ob-mysql sys # Connect to sys tenant
docker exec -it oceanbase-ce ob-mysql root # Connect to the root account of a general tenant
docker exec -it oceanbase-ce ob-mysql test # Connect to the test account of a general tenant

Or you can run this command to connect to an OceanBase instance with your local obclient or MySQL client.

mysql -uroot -h127.1 -P2881

Supported environment variables

This table shows the supported environment variables of the current oceanbase-ce mirror version:

Variable name	Default value	Description
MODE	{mini, slim, normal}	If it is mini, then the docker use mini mode to deploy OceanBase Database instance, it should be used only for research/study/evaluation. DO NOT use it for production or performance testing. If it is slim, then the docker can run in a smaller instance. It remove the obagent and can run a self tenant initial sql by yourself in the mount volume /root/boot/init.d. If you do not mount the volume path the docker does not init the tenant sql.
FASTBOOT	false	The container can run in a quick-start mode when FASTBOOT=true.
EXIT_WHILE_ERROR	true	Whether quit the container while start observer failed. If start observer failed, you can not explore the logs as the container will exit. But if you set the EXIT_WHILE_ERROR=false, the container will not exit while observer starting fail and you can use docker exec to debug.
OB_CLUSTER_NAME	obcluster	The oceanbase cluster name
OB_TENANT_NAME	test	The oceanbase mysql tenant name
OB_MEMORY_LIMIT	6G	The oceanbase cluster memory_limit configuration
OB_DATAFILE_SIZE	5G	The oceanbase cluster datafile_size configuration
OB_LOG_DISK_SIZE	5G	The oceanbase cluster log_disk_size configuration
OB_ROOT_PASSWORD		The oceanbase root user password of sys tenant
OB_SYSTEM_MEMORY	1G	The oceanbase cluster system_memory configuration
OB_TENANT_MINI_CPU		The oceanbase tenant mini_cpu configuration
OB_TENANT_MEMORY_SIZE		The oceanbase tenant memory_size configuration
OB_TENANT_LOG_DISK_SIZE		The oceanbase tenant log_disk_size configuration

Run the Sysbench script

oceanbase-ce image installs the Sysbench tool by default. And the Sysbench tool is configured. You can run these commands in sequence to run the Sysbench script with the default configurations.

docker exec -it oceanbase-ce obd test sysbench obcluster

Mount Volume

You can use -v /your/host/path:/container/path parameter in docker run command to save data in host os if you want to persistence the data of a container.

Below is an example.

docker run -d -p 2881:2881 -v $PWD/ob:/root/ob -v $PWD/obd:/root/.obd --name oceanbase oceanbase/oceanbase-ce

Note that you should use your own path.

The docker image oceanbase-ce saves the data to /root/ob directory default. You should bind both the /root/ob and /root/.obd. You can not start new docker image if you only bind the /root/ob directory, because the docker image oceanbase-ce uses the obd to manage database clusters and there is no information about the database cluster in a new docker container.

You can view more information about docker -v at docker volume.

Fast boot image building for a standalone node

The docker_build.sh script is provided in the tools/docker/standalone directory, through which the fast boot image can be built. Before running the script, please first modify the tools/docker/standalone/boot/_env environment configuration script:

Optional: Modify the remaining configuration items

After the modification is completed, execute the image build script:

build the image with latest oceanbase version ./docker_build.sh
build the image with specific oceanbase version ./docker_build.sh <oceanbase_rpm_version>. For example ./docker_build.sh 4.2.1.0-100000102023092807

After waiting for the build to be completed, you can start and test the instance in the same way as mentioned above.

Fault Diagnosis

A series of diagnostic methods are provided to diagnose errors in Docker.

Support for 'enable_rich_error_msg' parameter

Initially, the 'enable_rich_error_msg' parameter is enabled by default during the Docker startup process. If an error occurs during the startup process, more error information can be obtained using the trace command. After a successful startup, Docker sets this parameter to the false state.
Users can open this parameter to obtain more error information about SQL statements during the runtime phase. The method to open it is to connect to Docker's oceanbase using the system tenant, and then execute the following command:

alter system set enable_rich_error_msg = true;