Authenticate Google Cloud service account on docker image

Question

I'm finding different behavior from within and outside of a docker image for authenticating a google service account.

Outside. Succeeds.

C:\Users\Ben\AppData\Local\Google\Cloud SDK>gcloud auth activate-service-account [email protected] --key-file C:/Users/Ben/Dropbox/Google/MeerkatReader-d77c0d6aa04f.json --project api-project-773889352370
Activated service account credentials for: [[email protected]]

Run docker container, pass the .json key to tmp directory.

C:\Users\Ben\AppData\Local\Google\Cloud SDK>docker run -it -v C:/Users/Ben/Dropbox/Google/MeerkatReader-d77c0d6aa04f.json:/tmp/MeerkatReader-d77c0d6aa04f.json  --rm -p "127.0.0.1:8080:8080" --entrypoint=/bin/bash  gcr.io/cloud-datalab/datalab:local-20161227

From within docker, confirm the file is there

root@4a4a9314f15c:/tmp# ls
MeerkatReader-d77c0d6aa04f.json  npm-24-b7aa1bcf  npm-45-fd13ef7c  npm-7-22ec336e

Run the same command as before. Fails.

root@4a4a9314f15c:/tmp# gcloud auth activate-service-account [email protected]
t.com --key-file MeerkatReader-d77c0d6aa04f.json --project api-project-773889352370
ERROR: (gcloud.auth.activate-service-account) Failed to activate the given service account. Please ensure provided key file is valid.

What might cause this error? More broadly, what is the suggested strategy for passing credentials. I've tried this and it fails as well. I'm using the cloudml API and cloud vision, and i'd like to avoid manual gcloud init at the beginning of every run.

EDIT: To show gcloud info

root@7ff49b26484f:/# gcloud info --run-diagnostics
Network diagnostic detects and fixes local network connection issues.
Checking network connection...done.
Reachability Check passed.
Network diagnostic (1/1 checks) passed.

confirmed same behavior

root@7ff49b26484f:/tmp# gcloud auth activate-service-account [email protected] --key-file MeerkatReader-d77c0d6aa04f.json --project api-project-773889352370
ERROR: (gcloud.auth.activate-service-account) Failed to activate the given service account. Please ensure provided key file is valid.

Answer 1

This is probably due to a clock skew of the docker VM. I debugged the activate-service-account function of the google SDK and got the following error message:

There was a problem refreshing your current auth tokens: invalid_grant:  
Invalid JWT: Token must be a short-lived token and in a reasonable timeframe
Please run:
$ gcloud auth login

to obtain new credentials, or if you have already logged in with a different account:

$ gcloud config set account ACCOUNT

to select an already authenticated account to use.

After rebooting the VM, it worked like a charm.

Answer 2

Have you attempted to put the credential in the image from the beginning? Is that a similar outcome?

On the other hand, have you tried using --key-file /tmp/MeerkatReader-d77c0d6aa04f.json? Since it appears you're putting the json file in /tmp.

You might also consider checking the network configuration inside the container and with docker from the outside.