Ofelia - a job scheduler

Ofelia is a modern and low footprint job scheduler for container (Docker) environments, built on Go. Ofelia aims to be a replacement for the old fashioned cron.

Ofelia makes it easy to schedule jobs by just adding labels to your containers.

This fork is based off of mcuadros/ofelia.

Using it

Docker

The easiest way to deploy Ofelia is using a container runtime like Docker.

docker pull ghcr.io/netresearch/ofelia

Standalone

If you don't want to run Ofelia using our (Docker) container image, you can download a binary from our releases page.

wget https://github.com/netresearch/ofelia/releases/latest

Configuration

Jobs

Scheduling format

This application uses the Go implementation of cron with a parser for supporting optional seconds.

Supported formats:

• @every 10s
• 20 0 1 * * * (every night, 20 seconds after 1 AM - Quartz format
• 0 1 * * * (every night at 1 AM - standard cron format).

You can configure four different kinds of jobs:

• job-exec: this job is executed inside of a running container.
• job-run: runs a command inside of a new container, using a specific image.
• job-local: runs the command inside of the host running ofelia.
• job-service-run: runs the command inside a new "run-once" service, for running inside a swarm

See Jobs reference documentation for all available parameters.

Logging

Ofelia comes with three different logging drivers that can be configured in the [global] section or as top-level Docker labels:

• mail to send mails
• save to save structured execution reports to a directory
• slack to send messages via a slack webhook

Global Options

• smtp-host - address of the SMTP server.

• smtp-port - port number of the SMTP server.

• smtp-user - user name used to connect to the SMTP server.

• smtp-password - password used to connect to the SMTP server.

• smtp-tls-skip-verify - when true ignores certificate signed by unknown authority error.

• email-to - mail address of the receiver of the mail.

• email-from - mail address of the sender of the mail.

• mail-only-on-error - only send a mail if the execution was not successful.

• save-folder - directory in which the reports shall be written.

• save-only-on-error - only save a report if the execution was not successful.

• slack-webhook - URL of the slack webhook.

• slack-only-on-error - only send a slack message if the execution was not successful.

INI-style configuration

Run with ofelia daemon --config=/path/to/config.ini

[global]
save-folder = /var/log/ofelia_reports
save-only-on-error = true

[job-exec "job-executed-on-running-container"]
schedule = @hourly
container = my-container
command = touch /tmp/example

[job-run "job-executed-on-new-container"]
schedule = @hourly
image = ubuntu:latest
command = touch /tmp/example

[job-local "job-executed-on-current-host"]
schedule = @hourly
command = touch /tmp/example

[job-service-run "service-executed-on-new-container"]
schedule = 0,20,40 * * * *
image = ubuntu
network = swarm_network
command =  touch /tmp/example

Docker label configurations

In order to use this type of configuration, Ofelia needs access to the Docker socket.

⚠ Warning: This command changed! Please remove the --docker flag from your command.

docker run -it --rm \
    -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro \
    --label ofelia.save-folder="/var/log/ofelia_reports" \
    --label ofelia.save-only-on-error="true" \
        ghcr.io/netresearch/ofelia:latest daemon

Labels format: ofelia.<JOB_TYPE>.<JOB_NAME>.<JOB_PARAMETER>=<PARAMETER_VALUE>. This type of configuration supports all the capabilities provided by INI files, including the global logging options.

Also, it is possible to configure job-exec by setting labels configurations on the target container. To do that, additional label ofelia.enabled=true need to be present on the target container.

For example, we want ofelia to execute uname -a command in the existing container called nginx. To do that, we need to start the nginx container with the following configurations:

docker run -it --rm \
    --label ofelia.enabled=true \
    --label ofelia.job-exec.test-exec-job.schedule="@every 5s" \
    --label ofelia.job-exec.test-exec-job.command="uname -a" \
        nginx

Ofelia reads labels of all Docker containers for configuration by default. To apply on a subset of containers only, use the flag --docker-filter (or -f) similar to the filtering for docker ps. E.g. to apply to current docker compose project only using label filter:

version: "3"
services:
  ofelia:
    image: ghcr.io/netresearch/ofelia:latest
    depends_on:
      - nginx
    command: daemon --docker -f label=com.docker.compose.project=${COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME}
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
    labels:
      ofelia.job-local.my-test-job.schedule: "@every 5s"
      ofelia.job-local.my-test-job.command: "date"
  nginx:
    image: nginx
    labels:
      ofelia.enabled: "true"
      ofelia.job-exec.datecron.schedule: "@every 5s"
      ofelia.job-exec.datecron.command: "uname -a"

Dynamic Docker configuration

You can start Ofelia in its own container or on the host itself, and it will dynamically pick up any container that starts, stops or is modified on the fly. In order to achieve this, you simply have to use Docker containers with the labels described above and let Ofelia take care of the rest.

Hybrid configuration (INI files + Docker)

You can specify part of the configuration on the INI files, such as globals for the middlewares or even declare tasks in there but also merge them with Docker. The Docker labels will be parsed, added and removed on the fly but the config file can also be used.

Use the INI file to:

• Configure any middleware
• Configure any global setting
• Create a run jobs, so they executes in a new container each time

[global]
slack-webhook = https://myhook.com/auth

[job-run "job-executed-on-new-container"]
schedule = @hourly
image = ubuntu:latest
command = touch /tmp/example

Use docker to:

• Create exec jobs

docker run -it --rm \
    --label ofelia.enabled=true \
    --label ofelia.job-exec.test-exec-job.schedule="@every 5s" \
    --label ofelia.job-exec.test-exec-job.command="uname -a" \
        nginx