Air Gap environment (aka disconnected environment)

When we have our cluster on a air gap or proxy environment, we need to copy the actual images into our custom registry and update image details via environment variables on the operator deployment under the container tekton-operator-lifecycle as follows, This will allow us to use images from our custom registry.

Rewrite image registry

You can rewrite the registry host of all images managed by the operator by setting the TEKTON_REGISTRY_OVERRIDE environment variable on the tekton-operator-lifecycle container. This keeps the original repository path and tag/digest, and only changes the registry host.

If not set, no change is applied (default behavior).

We can rewrite the actual registry ghcr.io of all images by simply set the environment variable TEKTON_REGISTRY_OVERRIDE ad follow:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: tekton-operator
  namespace: tekton-operator
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: tekton-operator-lifecycle
          env:
            # Optional: globally rewrite registry host for all images
            - name: TEKTON_REGISTRY_OVERRIDE
              value: my-internal-registry.io/my-tekton-folder
            # You can still specify per-image values; their registry host will be rewritten to the override above
            - name: IMAGE_DASHBOARD_TEKTON_DASHBOARD
              value: ghcr.io/tektoncd/dashboard:v0.48.0

Behavior and precedence:

• If TEKTON_REGISTRY_OVERRIDE is unset, images are taken from per-image env vars (if set) or from the shipped defaults.
• If TEKTON_REGISTRY_OVERRIDE is set, the operator rewrites the registry host for all resolved images (from per-image env vars and defaults). The repository path and tag/digest are preserved.
• There is currently no per-image opt-out when the global override is set. To exempt specific images, do not set TEKTON_REGISTRY_OVERRIDE and rely solely on per-image env vars.

Rewrite image one by one

We can also rewrite images one by one using the following:

Sample: images as environment variable in operator deployment

example.com/tektoncd/dashboard:v0.48.0
            - name: IMAGE_JOB_PRUNER_TKN
              value: custom-example.com/tektoncd/tkn:v0.31.0

Tekton instance update

If you update an existing instance of tekton, you will need also to refresh the TektonInstallerSets so the new value can be taken into account.

kubectl delete tektoninstallerset <installer-set-name>

List of image environment variables

Images supported in kubernetes

Images supported in OpenShift

Supports all the images listed above in kubernetes and following are specific to OpenShift