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Using Custom Configuration File
KubeDB supports providing custom configuration for PostgreSQL. This tutorial will show you how to use KubeDB to run PostgreSQL database with custom configuration.
Before You Begin
At first, you need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using kind.
Now, install KubeDB cli on your workstation and KubeDB operator in your cluster following the steps here.
To keep things isolated, this tutorial uses a separate namespace called demo throughout this tutorial.
$ kubectl create ns demo
namespace/demo created
Note: YAML files used in this tutorial are stored in docs/examples/postgres folder in GitHub repository kubedb/docs.
Overview
PostgreSQL allows to configure database via Configuration File, SQL and Shell. The most common way is to edit configuration file postgresql.conf. When PostgreSQL docker image starts, it uses the configuration specified in postgresql.conf file. This file can have include directive which allows to include configuration from other files. One of these include directives is include_if_exists which accept a file reference. If the referenced file exists, it includes configuration from the file. Otherwise, it uses default configuration. KubeDB takes advantage of this feature to allow users to provide their custom configuration. To know more about configuring PostgreSQL see here.
At first, you have to create a config file named user.conf with your desired configuration. Then you have to put this file into a volume. You have to specify this volume in spec.configSecret section while creating Postgres crd. KubeDB will mount this volume into /etc/config/ directory of the database pod which will be referenced by include_if_exists directive.
In this tutorial, we will configure max_connections and shared_buffers via a custom config file. We will use Secret as volume source.
Custom Configuration
At first, let’s create user.conf file setting max_connections and shared_buffers parameters.
$ cat user.conf
max_connections=300
shared_buffers=256MB
Note that config file name must be
user.conf
Now, create a Secret with this configuration file.
$ kubectl create secret generic -n demo pg-configuration --from-literal=user.conf="$(curl -fsSL https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2023.11.2/docs/examples/postgres/configuration/user.conf)"
secret/pg-configuration created
Verify the Secret has the configuration file.
$ kubectl get secret -n demo pg-configuration -o yaml
apiVersion: v1
stringData:
user.conf: |-
max_connections=300
shared_buffers=256MB
kind: Secret
metadata:
creationTimestamp: "2019-02-07T12:08:26Z"
name: pg-configuration
namespace: demo
resourceVersion: "44214"
selfLink: /api/v1/namespaces/demo/secrets/pg-configuration
uid: 131b321f-2ad1-11e9-9d44-080027154f61
Now, create Postgres crd specifying spec.configSecret field.
$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2023.11.2/docs/examples/postgres/configuration/pg-configuration.yaml
postgres.kubedb.com/custom-postgres created
Below is the YAML for the Postgres crd we just created.
apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1alpha2
kind: Postgres
metadata:
name: custom-postgres
namespace: demo
spec:
version: "13.2"
configSecret:
name: pg-configuration
storage:
storageClassName: "standard"
accessModes:
- ReadWriteOnce
resources:
requests:
storage: 1Gi
Now, wait a few minutes. KubeDB operator will create necessary PVC, statefulset, services, secret etc. If everything goes well, we will see that a pod with the name custom-postgres-0 has been created.
Check that the statefulset’s pod is running
$ kubectl get pod -n demo custom-postgres-0
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
custom-postgres-0 1/1 Running 0 14m
Check the pod’s log to see if the database is ready
$ kubectl logs -f -n demo custom-postgres-0
I0705 12:05:51.697190 1 logs.go:19] FLAG: --alsologtostderr="false"
I0705 12:05:51.717485 1 logs.go:19] FLAG: --enable-analytics="true"
I0705 12:05:51.717543 1 logs.go:19] FLAG: --help="false"
I0705 12:05:51.717558 1 logs.go:19] FLAG: --log_backtrace_at=":0"
I0705 12:05:51.717566 1 logs.go:19] FLAG: --log_dir=""
I0705 12:05:51.717573 1 logs.go:19] FLAG: --logtostderr="false"
I0705 12:05:51.717581 1 logs.go:19] FLAG: --stderrthreshold="0"
I0705 12:05:51.717589 1 logs.go:19] FLAG: --v="0"
I0705 12:05:51.717597 1 logs.go:19] FLAG: --vmodule=""
We want "custom-postgres-0" as our leader
I0705 12:05:52.753464 1 leaderelection.go:175] attempting to acquire leader lease demo/custom-postgres-leader-lock...
I0705 12:05:52.822093 1 leaderelection.go:184] successfully acquired lease demo/custom-postgres-leader-lock
Got leadership, now do your jobs
Running as Primary
sh: locale: not found
WARNING: enabling "trust" authentication for local connections
You can change this by editing pg_hba.conf or using the option -A, or
--auth-local and --auth-host, the next time you run initdb.
ALTER ROLE
/scripts/primary/start.sh: ignoring /var/initdb/*
LOG: database system was shut down at 2018-07-05 12:07:51 UTC
LOG: MultiXact member wraparound protections are now enabled
LOG: database system is ready to accept connections
LOG: autovacuum launcher started
Once we see LOG: database system is ready to accept connections in the log, the database is ready.
Now, we will check if the database has started with the custom configuration we have provided. We will exec into the pod and use SHOW query to check the run-time parameters.
$ kubectl exec -it -n demo custom-postgres-0 sh
/ #
## login as user "postgres". no authentication required from inside the pod because it is using trust authentication local connection.
/ # psql -U postgres
psql (9.6.7)
Type "help" for help.
## query for "max_connections"
postgres=# SHOW max_connections;
max_connections
-----------------
300
(1 row)
## query for "shared_buffers"
postgres=# SHOW shared_buffers;
shared_buffers
----------------
256MB
(1 row)
## log out from database
postgres=# \q
/ #
You can also connect to this database from pgAdmin and use following SQL query to check these configuration.
SELECT name,setting
FROM pg_settings
WHERE name='max_connections' OR name='shared_buffers';
Cleaning up
To cleanup the Kubernetes resources created by this tutorial, run:
kubectl patch -n demo pg/custom-postgres -p '{"spec":{"terminationPolicy":"WipeOut"}}' --type="merge"
kubectl delete -n demo pg/custom-postgres
kubectl delete -n demo secret pg-configuration
kubectl delete ns demo
If you would like to uninstall KubeDB operator, please follow the steps here.
Next Steps
- Learn about backup and restore PostgreSQL database using Stash.
- Learn about initializing PostgreSQL with Script.
- Want to setup PostgreSQL cluster? Check how to configure Highly Available PostgreSQL Cluster
- Monitor your PostgreSQL database with KubeDB using built-in Prometheus.
- Monitor your PostgreSQL database with KubeDB using Prometheus operator.
- Want to hack on KubeDB? Check our contribution guidelines.