Maintaining OCL API’s docker containers

Overview

OclApi consists of the following containers:

  • ocl_api

  • ocl_mongo

  • ocl_flower

  • ocl_solr

  • ocl_worker

  • ocl_redis

When things go wrong, there are a number of ways to recycle some or all of the containers

1. Restarting the application through build pipeline

OCL API pipeline has stages named “QA deploy”, “Staging Deploy” and “Production Deploy”. These re deploy a certain version of the code and restart all container except ocl_mongo and ocl_solr.

This is the safest and most non-obtrusive, therefore the recommended way of restarting the OCLAPI application. However, further steps might be needed at times

2. Restarting the application using docker-compose commands

Though not recommended, this mode of operation needs SSH access to the server. Once SSH’d in:

  1. navigate to oclapi/django-nonrel/ocl

  2. run docker-compose down

  3. Redeploy using the pipeline, or run deploy/start_docker.sh

3. Hard recycling containers

Sometimes, docker containers mentioned hang and need to be recycled hard. In order to do this:

Go to oclapi/django-nonrel/ocl and run docker-compose down command. If it didn’t work, use these steps.

  1. Run docker ps to find the container ID.

  2. To terminate the container, use the following command:

docker rm -fv CONTAINER_ID

The -f flag is short for --force=false, which forces the removal of a running container. The -v flag is short for --volumes=false, which removes the volumes associated with the container. You can use the long or short version of the flags.

  1. Redeploy using the pipeline, or run deploy/start_docker.sh

4. Completely restart docker

Sometimes docker just needs to be restarted completely. For example, if it is not possible to close the “default network”. These steps will restart docker:

  • Just stop docker deamon ( sudo service docker stop )

  • Start again ( sudo service docker start )

  • Go to API folder ( cd /root/oclapi/django-nonrel/ocl )

  • Down dockers ( docker-compose down )

  • Redeploy from GoCD

5. GoCD Docker

To start GoCD using docker:

docker start eloquent_brown
docker start go-agent
docker start go-agent-2