How to configure New relic agent on Docker

Today I want to talk about New Relic and Docker. A few days ago I had to install new relic on our servers and because we are using Docker I needed to install it from a Dockerfile.

Installing New Relic in a Dockerfile

Before you run the install commands for new relic php module you need to create some environment variables so you could install new relic with no user interactions.

 ENV ENVIRONMENT dev
 ENV NR_INSTALL_SILENT true
 ENV NR_INSTALL_KEY XXX

The first one ENVIRONMENT is not required, it’s just a variable that I used in order to configure the application name into newrelic.ini file. The other two variables are required. You will want to run the new relic install in silent mode NR_INSTALL_SILENT and also provide the NR_INSTALL_KEY.

Note! Don’t forget to replace XXX from ENV NR_INSTALL_KEY XXX with your new relic key.

Next you can install new relic php module from the tar archive. I used this approach because our dockers are based on Alpine Linux.

Note! From New Relic documentation: “Download the appropriate tar distribution file from the New Relic website. For example, for SmartOS download newrelic-php5-X.X.X.X-solaris.tar.gz or for Alpine Linux download newrelic-php5-X.X.X.X-linux-musl.tar.gz.”

RUN mkdir /opt && cd /opt \
	&& wget https://download.newrelic.com/php_agent/release/newrelic-php5-6.8.0.177-linux-musl.tar.gz --no-check-certificate \
	&& tar -xzvf newrelic-php5-6.8.0.177-linux-musl.tar.gz \
	&& ./newrelic-php5-6.8.0.177-linux-musl/newrelic-install install \
	&& echo 'Configure the application name'
	&& sed -i 's/newrelic.appname = "PHP Application"/newrelic.appname = "PIM '${ENVIRONMENT}'"/g' /etc/php/conf.d/newrelic.ini

It’s as simple as that! Thanks for reading, see you next time.

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