readystack/kafka repository overview

⁠Apache Kafka

readystack/kafka:4.4.0-CE-ubuntu24.04-r2

Source, recipe and records

• Source and build recipe: https://readystack.dev/products/kafka/recipe⁠
• Upstream source at this release's pinned commit (4.4.0-rc4): https://github.com/apache/kafka/tree/1156b2752aaa28eafc0b4c4d387e63356793268d⁠
• Product page: https://readystack.dev/products/kafka⁠
• Hermetic Build Kit for this release (free with an account): https://readystack.dev/products/kafka⁠
• Release history (JSON): https://readystack.dev/api/releases/kafka⁠
• Defect record: https://readystack.dev/defects.html?product=kafka⁠
• Today's scan: https://readystack.dev/products/kafka#pp-grade⁠
• Report an issue: https://github.com/ReadyStackFree/readystack/issues/new?template=bug.yml&product=kafka⁠
• Signing key (cosign): https://readystack.dev/keys/cosign.pub⁠

A cosign-signed build of github.com/apache/kafka 4.4.0 (Apache-2.0), built from source (Scala 2.13), built clean-room from official upstream source by ReadyStack⁠.

⁠Who uses it and why

Who: Engineering teams who move streams of events between systems in real time, for data pipelines, analytics and event-driven applications.

Why: Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform. Applications publish streams of events, Kafka stores them durably, and other applications read and process them in real time or later.

Use case: An online retailer records every order, payment and shipment as an event. Kafka stores those streams, and the warehouse system, the fraud checks and the analytics database each read them at their own pace, instead of every system calling every other system directly.

About the upstream project, written from its own description: https://github.com/apache/kafka⁠ · https://kafka.apache.org/intro⁠

⁠What you get

Signature, user and attestations below were measured on the published digest sha256:bd758be44fa4d643bd95d0d73230ed52098edcc44d8040c127b109a51db045f7 on 2026-10-27.

• Scan scores — we scan every image we publish every day (an SBOM made with syft, vulnerabilities matched with grype, scored with cerodeo-v1, the rubric ce.rodeo published until 2026-10-26) and record each scan with how its score was derived. This release's first and latest scan: https://readystack.dev/products/kafka⁠
• ReadyStack release check — passed at release on 2026-10-27: no fixable critical or high vulnerability (Docker Scout and OSV), a non-root user, SBOM and provenance attached. This is ReadyStack's own test, not a Docker grade; vulnerabilities published since then are in today's result at https://readystack.dev/queue⁠.
• Signed — cosign signature by the ReadyStack release key (fingerprint 04daa92344a52dbc) on this release's index digest sha256:bd758be44fa4d643bd95d0d73230ed52098edcc44d8040c127b109a51db045f7; verify with cosign verify --key https://readystack.dev/keys/cosign.pub readystack/kafka:4.4.0-CE-ubuntu24.04-r2.
• Attestations — An SPDX SBOM and SLSA v1 build provenance are attached to this digest.
• Runs as a non-root user (kafka).
• Built from source by ReadyStack.

⁠Which tag should I pull?

This image follows the ReadyStack release-tag convention:

• The current release is 4.4.0-CE-ubuntu24.04-r2 — the release listed at readystack.dev. Release tags use the pattern <upstream-version>-CE-<base-os>-r<N>; the current one is signed, attested (SBOM + provenance), and is provided under the ReadyStack Agreement⁠.

• Earlier release tags (an older version or revision in the same pattern) are superseded. They stay pullable so existing deployments can pin them, but they are no longer re-graded, and fixes appear only in newer releases: move to the current release. For a superseded release's build kit, ask support.

• Any tag beginning with internal- is an engineering-pipeline artifact published for build observability. It is unsupported, may change or disappear without notice, and must not be used in production.

# ✓ current release
docker pull readystack/kafka:4.4.0-CE-ubuntu24.04-r2

# ✗ unsupported (do not pull)
docker pull readystack/kafka:internal-...

This release is signed; verify it with cosign verify --key https://readystack.dev/keys/cosign.pub readystack/kafka:4.4.0-CE-ubuntu24.04-r2 (the signature is recorded in the public Sigstore transparency log). Support: [email protected]⁠, as set out in the ReadyStack Agreement⁠.

⁠Deployment

A single container running one Kafka node in KRaft combined mode (it is both broker and controller; Kafka 4 has no ZooKeeper) as the non-root kafka user, on the Eclipse Temurin 25 JRE. Topic data is log segments under /var/lib/kafka/data. There is no web UI, no REST API and no SQL database; clients use the Kafka protocol on port 9092, and the Kafka command-line tools are in the image under /opt/kafka/bin (on PATH).

docker run -d --name kafka -p 9092:9092 -v kafka-data:/var/lib/kafka/data readystack/kafka:4.4.0-CE-ubuntu24.04-r2

With no environment variables the node uses the image's default configuration: one PLAINTEXT listener on 9092 advertised as localhost:9092, so clients on the Docker host reach it at localhost:9092. Clients on other hosts or in other containers need KAFKA_ADVERTISED_LISTENERS, and setting it (or any KAFKA_* server property) replaces the whole default configuration (upstream's rule): pass a complete set, e.g. docker run -d --name kafka -p 9092:9092 -v kafka-data:/var/lib/kafka/data -e KAFKA_NODE_ID=1 -e KAFKA_PROCESS_ROLES=broker,controller -e KAFKA_LISTENERS=PLAINTEXT://:9092,CONTROLLER://:9093 -e KAFKA_ADVERTISED_LISTENERS=PLAINTEXT://<host>:9092 -e KAFKA_CONTROLLER_LISTENER_NAMES=CONTROLLER -e KAFKA_LISTENER_SECURITY_PROTOCOL_MAP=CONTROLLER:PLAINTEXT,PLAINTEXT:PLAINTEXT -e KAFKA_CONTROLLER_QUORUM_VOTERS=1@localhost:9093 -e KAFKA_OFFSETS_TOPIC_REPLICATION_FACTOR=1 -e KAFKA_TRANSACTION_STATE_LOG_REPLICATION_FACTOR=1 -e KAFKA_TRANSACTION_STATE_LOG_MIN_ISR=1 -e KAFKA_SHARE_COORDINATOR_STATE_TOPIC_REPLICATION_FACTOR=1 -e KAFKA_SHARE_COORDINATOR_STATE_TOPIC_MIN_ISR=1 -e KAFKA_LOG_DIRS=/var/lib/kafka/data readystack/kafka:4.4.0-CE-ubuntu24.04-r2.

⁠The full ReadyStack Hermetic Build Kit

The complete --network=none build kit for this image — plus admin/DB/API handbooks, the build's validation records, and its build provenance records — is a free download for any registered account at readystack.dev/products/kafka⁠. A clean-room rebuild from this release's archive on an egress-blocked host reproduced its linux/amd64 digest sha256:d3f92612901df9e1b5427c406b7b4ddf8f46dcc56501ef558e7888fdd585eec4 on 2026-10-27.

— ReadyStack · readystack.dev