Zeppelin Authentication with Docker

Apache Zeppelin is a notebook for Apache Spark. Zeppelin doesn't support authentication, a requirement for multi-user environments. This is an attempt to use nginx and Docker containers to provide simple password-basd authentication.

Create Password File

A basic password file is needed for authentication. I don't distribute one with the containers, so you'll need to create one.

$ cd nginx_docker
$ htpasswd -cb htpasswd [user] [password]

Update Zeppelin Environment File

If you need to change the Zeppelin environment file (say to point it at a cluster), modify zeppelin_docker/zeppelin-env.sh before building the containers.

Change Ports

Each instance of Zeppelin will need its own ports. The default ports are 8080 and 8081. If you want to use different ports, you will need to:

1. Update zeppelin_docker/zeppelin-site.xml
2. Update the exposed ports in zeppelin_docker/Dockerfile
3. Update the exposed ports in nginx_docker/Dockerfile
4. Update the ports in nginx_docker/nginx.conf
5. Update ZEPPELIN_PORT_8080_TCP_ADDR in nginx_docker/run.sh

Note that the ports must all agree.

Build Docker Containers

$ cd zeppelin_docker
$ docker build -t rnowling/zeppelin .
$ cd ../nginx_docker
$ docker build -t rnowling/nginx .

Run Docker Containers

$ docker run -d --name rnowling-zeppelin rnowling/zeppelin
$ docker run -d --name nginx --link rnowling-zeppelin:zeppelin -p 8080:8080 -p 8081:8081 -v /local/notebook/path:/zeppelin/notebook rnowling/nginx

Now, point your browser to [http://localhost:8080/]

Known Issues

Note that you will have to authenticate twice. :( This may not be fixable according to this post.