Remote driver

The Buildx remote driver allows for more complex custom build workloads, allowing you to connect to externally managed BuildKit instances. This is useful for scenarios that require manual management of the BuildKit daemon, or where a BuildKit daemon is exposed from another source.

Synopsis

$ docker buildx create \
  --name remote \
  --driver remote \
  tcp://localhost:1234

The following table describes the available driver-specific options that you can pass to --driver-opt:

Example: Remote BuildKit over Unix sockets

This guide shows you how to create a setup with a BuildKit daemon listening on a Unix socket, and have Buildx connect through it.

1. Ensure that BuildKit is installed.

   For example, you can launch an instance of buildkitd with:

   $ sudo ./buildkitd --group $(id -gn) --addr unix://$HOME/buildkitd.sock
   

   Alternatively, see here for running buildkitd in rootless mode or here for examples of running it as a systemd service.

2. Check that you have a Unix socket that you can connect to.

   $ ls -lh /home/user/buildkitd.sock
   srw-rw---- 1 root user 0 May  5 11:04 /home/user/buildkitd.sock
   

3. Connect Buildx to it using the remote driver:

   $ docker buildx create \
     --name remote-unix \
     --driver remote \
     unix://$HOME/buildkitd.sock
   

4. List available builders with docker buildx ls. You should then see remote-unix among them:

   $ docker buildx ls
   NAME/NODE           DRIVER/ENDPOINT                        STATUS  PLATFORMS
   remote-unix         remote
     remote-unix0      unix:///home/.../buildkitd.sock        running linux/amd64, linux/amd64/v2, linux/amd64/v3, linux/386
   default *           docker
     default           default                                running linux/amd64, linux/386
   

You can switch to this new builder as the default using docker buildx use remote-unix, or specify it per build using --builder:

$ docker buildx build --builder=remote-unix -t test --load .

Remember that you need to use the --load flag if you want to load the build result into the Docker daemon.

Example: Remote BuildKit in Docker container

This guide will show you how to create setup similar to the docker-container driver, by manually booting a BuildKit Docker container and connecting to it using the Buildx remote driver. This procedure will manually create a container and access it via it's exposed port. (You'd probably be better of just using the docker-container driver that connects to BuildKit through the Docker daemon, but this is for illustration purposes.)

1. Generate certificates for BuildKit.

   You can use this bake definition as a starting point:

   SAN="localhost 127.0.0.1" docker buildx bake "https://github.com/moby/buildkit.git#master:examples/create-certs"
   

   Note that while it's possible to expose BuildKit over TCP without using TLS, it's not recommended. Doing so allows arbitrary access to BuildKit without credentials.

2. With certificates generated in .certs/, startup the container:

   $ docker run -d --rm \
     --name=remote-buildkitd \
     --privileged \
     -p 1234:1234 \
     -v $PWD/.certs:/etc/buildkit/certs \
     moby/buildkit:latest \
     --addr tcp://0.0.0.0:1234 \
     --tlscacert /etc/buildkit/certs/daemon/ca.pem \
     --tlscert /etc/buildkit/certs/daemon/cert.pem \
     --tlskey /etc/buildkit/certs/daemon/key.pem
   

   This command starts a BuildKit container and exposes the daemon's port 1234 to localhost.

3. Connect to this running container using Buildx:

   $ docker buildx create \
     --name remote-container \
     --driver remote \
     --driver-opt cacert=${PWD}/.certs/client/ca.pem,cert=${PWD}/.certs/client/cert.pem,key=${PWD}/.certs/client/key.pem,servername=<TLS_SERVER_NAME> \
     tcp://localhost:1234
   

   Alternatively, use the docker-container:// URL scheme to connect to the BuildKit container without specifying a port:

   $ docker buildx create \
     --name remote-container \
     --driver remote \
     docker-container://remote-container
   

Example: Remote BuildKit in Kubernetes

This guide will show you how to create a setup similar to the kubernetes driver by manually creating a BuildKit Deployment. While the kubernetes driver will do this under-the-hood, it might sometimes be desirable to scale BuildKit manually. Additionally, when executing builds from inside Kubernetes pods, the Buildx builder will need to be recreated from within each pod or copied between them.

1. Create a Kubernetes deployment of buildkitd, as per the instructions here.

   Following the guide, create certificates for the BuildKit daemon and client using create-certs.sh, and create a deployment of BuildKit pods with a service that connects to them.

2. Assuming that the service is called buildkitd, create a remote builder in Buildx, ensuring that the listed certificate files are present:

   $ docker buildx create \
     --name remote-kubernetes \
     --driver remote \
     --driver-opt cacert=${PWD}/.certs/client/ca.pem,cert=${PWD}/.certs/client/cert.pem,key=${PWD}/.certs/client/key.pem \
     tcp://buildkitd.default.svc:1234
   

Note that this only works internally, within the cluster, since the BuildKit setup guide only creates a ClusterIP service. To access a builder remotely, you can set up and use an ingress, which is outside the scope of this guide.

Debug a remote builder in Kubernetes

If you're having trouble accessing a remote builder deployed in Kubernetes, you can use the kube-pod:// URL scheme to connect directly to a BuildKit pod through the Kubernetes API. Note that this method only connects to a single pod in the deployment.

$ kubectl get pods --selector=app=buildkitd -o json | jq -r '.items[].metadata.name'
buildkitd-XXXXXXXXXX-xxxxx
$ docker buildx create \
  --name remote-container \
  --driver remote \
  kube-pod://buildkitd-XXXXXXXXXX-xxxxx

Alternatively, use the port forwarding mechanism of kubectl:

$ kubectl port-forward svc/buildkitd 1234:1234

Then you can point the remote driver at tcp://localhost:1234.