kates

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for kates

Minimal image for Kates, a Kafka performance and resilience testing platform.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/kates:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The kates image is designed as a drop-in replacement for the JVM build of upstream ghcr.io/bmscomp/kates, published as the versioned, unsuffixed release tags (not the :latest or -native tags, which are the GraalVM native build). It preserves the java -jar quarkus-run.jar startup command, /app working directory, non-root kates account (UID 100/GID 101), and bundled CLI at /usr/local/bin/kates. JAVA_HOME uses the Chainguard path /usr/lib/jvm/default-jvm instead of upstream's /opt/java/openjdk.

Unlike the upstream image, this image does not prepopulate /home/kates/.kates.yaml; the CLI creates its context file when needed. Kates extracts native compression libraries at runtime, so deployments with a read-only root filesystem must provide a writable, executable /tmp. The upstream Helm chart already mounts an emptyDir there.

This image defines no HEALTHCHECK and ships no curl (only BusyBox wget), unlike upstream's HEALTHCHECK curl -f http://localhost:8080/q/health/live. Compose service_healthy setups that assume it will not work as-is; define your own probe, for example test: ["CMD", "wget", "-qO-", "http://localhost:8080/q/health/live"].

Prerequisites

Kates requires PostgreSQL for persistence and a Kafka cluster for performance testing. Kubernetes, LitmusChaos, Trogdor, Prometheus, and OpenTelemetry are optional integrations for the corresponding testing and observability features. See the upstream deployment guide for the complete platform architecture.

Getting Started

Create a Docker network and start PostgreSQL:

docker network create kates-network
docker run -d --name kates-postgres --network kates-network \
  -e POSTGRES_DB=kates \
  -e POSTGRES_USER=kates \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=kates \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/postgres:latest

Start Kates with a read-only root filesystem and writable temporary storage. KATES_KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS=127.0.0.1:1 deliberately points at an unreachable broker so the API comes up for a quick smoke check without a Kafka cluster; point it at a real broker for Kafka features:

docker run -d --name kates --network kates-network -p 8080:8080 \
  --read-only --tmpfs /tmp:rw,exec,nosuid \
  -e KATES_API_KEY=change-me \
  -e QUARKUS_DATASOURCE_USERNAME=kates \
  -e QUARKUS_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD=kates \
  -e QUARKUS_DATASOURCE_JDBC_URL=jdbc:postgresql://kates-postgres:5432/kates \
  -e KATES_KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS=127.0.0.1:1 \
  -e KATES_KAFKA_SECURITY_PROTOCOL=PLAINTEXT \
  -e KATES_CHAOS_ORPHAN_RECOVERY_ENABLED=false \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/kates:latest

Confirm the authenticated API is available:

curl -fsS --retry 30 --retry-all-errors --retry-delay 2 \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer change-me' \
  http://localhost:8080/api/tests/types

The response contains the supported Kates test types.

Configuration

Kates uses MicroProfile Config, so application properties map to uppercase environment variables such as KATES_KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS. The upstream chart values document Kafka security, PostgreSQL, JVM, API-key, and workload settings.

To deploy the upstream chart with this image, clone the chart and create a values file:

git clone --branch main --depth 1 https://github.com/bmscomp/kates.git
cat > values.yaml <<'EOF'
image:
  repository: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/kates
  tag: latest
kafka:
  bootstrapServers: kafka.kafka.svc:9092
  security:
    protocol: PLAINTEXT
  sasl:
    enabled: false
postgresql:
  enabled: true
  image:
    repository: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/postgres
initContainers:
  waitForPostgres:
    image: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/netcat
EOF
helm install kates ./kates/charts/kates --namespace kates \
  --create-namespace --values values.yaml

The upstream chart ships non-blocking /q/health/* probe defaults, so no probe overrides are needed with this image.

Documentation and Resources

• Kates documentation
• Kates REST API reference
• Kates CLI reference
• Chainguard Containers documentation

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.