Migrate off Bitnami images before Aug 28 (memcached/postgresql/rabbitmq/redis)

[arnxxau]

Bitnami announced that on August 28, 2025 they’re moving most public images to a read-only Bitnami Legacy repo (no updates) and keeping only a small, hardened latest-only set free. That means our Bitnami-based Helm deps will stop receiving security patches and could break on redeploys if tags disappear. We should replace Bitnami images in this chart with well-maintained alternatives.

Current Bitnami charts in use:

• memcached oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts - version 7.4.16
• postgresql oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts - version 15.5.32
• rabbitmq oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts - version 14.7.0
• redis oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts - version 20.1.4

Official announcement for context:

• GitHub: Upcoming changes to the Bitnami catalog (effective August 28th, 2025) bitnami/containers#83267
• Broadcom/Bitnami news post: https://news.broadcom.com/app-dev/broadcom-introduces-bitnami-secure-images-for-production-ready-containerized-applications

[ariep]

I've been keeping a fork of this repo for a while in order to add a couple of minor chart features. In this fork I've replaced the bitnami charts deps by ones from groundhog2k. It's not as extensive a collection as Bitnami's, but carries three of the four deps Zulip needs -- memcached is missing but would be relatively easy to add I think. It uses vanilla upstream docker images, not custom ones like Bitnami. It's relatively obscure and not backed by a big company, which is a disadvantage but can also be an advantage like we've now seen with Bitnami. It seems high-quality, consistent among charts, and frequently updated.

If the maintainers think that this is a good choice, I can help create a PR to make this switch.

[alexmv]

There's been a reprieve until September 29th.

[alexmv]

I honestly don't understand the benefit given by using the bitnami images vs the official ones (as docker-compose does). I think we'd be amenable to switching to any image supplier which has reasonable reputation and is reasonably commonly-used.

[lightning-sagar]

Hey @arnxxau @timabbott

I’ve looked into the Bitnami deprecation and the current chart setup, and I’d like to propose a simpler migration approach to get us off Bitnami

Current Bitnami Dependencies

Defined in Chart.yaml:

Instead of switching Helm dependencies immediately (which might require reworking values and templates), I suggest we keep the current charts for now but override the image sources in values.yaml to use the latest official Docker images.

Example:

redis:
  image:
    registry: docker.io
    repository: redis
    tag: 7.4
postgresql:
  image:
    registry: docker.io
    repository: postgres
    tag: 15
rabbitmq:
  image:
    registry: docker.io
    repository: rabbitmq
    tag: 4.0
memcached:
  image:
    registry: docker.io
    repository: memcached
    tag: 1.6

This way:

• We stop pulling unmaintained Bitnami images immediately.
• The existing Helm templates and configs stay functional.
• We can migrate to alternative charts (like Groundhog2k’s) later, once we verify everything works cleanly with the official images.

If everyone’s okay with that, I can put together a PR that updates values.yaml, also any suggestion are welcome

[mikkeschiren]

Could be a good solution, but bitnami helm charts mess things up in general, how you tried this approach on an existing setup?

[lightning-sagar]

Hey @mikkeschiren, I havent tested it on a live setup yet, but thats exactly what I plan to check next... I want to see if Bitnamis templates depend on any image specific env vars or init logic that would break with the official images....

If the maintainers are okay with this direction, I can move forward and open a PR with the changes. If not, we can pivot to migrating fully to another chart (like Groundhog2ks)....
Thanks for response!!

[alexmv]

Bitnami's charts do not work with stock RabbitMQ or Redis images. You can see #520 where I'm working on adding end-to-end tests for the helm chart, in part to validate the right fix for this issue.

[lightning-sagar]

oh yeah, I see thanks for clarifying!! is there somehow I can help you with fixing the issue?
Let me know :)