Can you run GUI applications in a Docker container?
You can simply install a vncserver along with Firefox :)
I pushed an image, vnc/firefox, here: docker pull creack/firefox-vnc
The image has been made with this Dockerfile:
# Firefox over VNC
#
# VERSION 0.1
# DOCKER-VERSION 0.2
FROM ubuntu:12.04
# Make sure the package repository is up to date
RUN echo "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main universe" > /etc/apt/sources.list
RUN apt-get update
# Install vnc, xvfb in order to create a 'fake' display and firefox
RUN apt-get install -y x11vnc xvfb firefox
RUN mkdir ~/.vnc
# Setup a password
RUN x11vnc -storepasswd 1234 ~/.vnc/passwd
# Autostart firefox (might not be the best way to do it, but it does the trick)
RUN bash -c 'echo "firefox" >> /.bashrc'
This will create a Docker container running VNC with the password 1234
:
For Docker version 18 or newer:
docker run -p 5900:5900 -e HOME=/ creack/firefox-vnc x11vnc -forever -usepw -create
For Docker version 1.3 or newer:
docker run -p 5900 -e HOME=/ creack/firefox-vnc x11vnc -forever -usepw -create
For Docker before version 1.3:
docker run -p 5900 creack/firefox-vnc x11vnc -forever -usepw -create
Xauthority becomes an issue with newer systems. I can either discard any protection with xhost + before running my docker containers, or I can pass in a well prepared Xauthority file. Typical Xauthority files are hostname specific. With docker, each container can have a different host name (set with docker run -h), but even setting the hostname of the container identical to the host system did not help in my case. xeyes (I like this example) simply would ignore the magic cookie and pass no credentials to the server. Hence we get an error message 'No protocol specified Cannot open display'
The Xauthority file can be written in a way so that the hostname does not matter. We need to set the Authentication Family to 'FamilyWild'. I am not sure, if xauth has a proper command line for this, so here is an example that combines xauth and sed to do that. We need to change the first 16 bits of the nlist output. The value of FamilyWild is 65535 or 0xffff.
docker build -t xeyes - << __EOF__
FROM debian
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -qqy x11-apps
ENV DISPLAY :0
CMD xeyes
__EOF__
XSOCK=/tmp/.X11-unix
XAUTH=/tmp/.docker.xauth
xauth nlist :0 | sed -e 's/^..../ffff/' | xauth -f $XAUTH nmerge -
docker run -ti -v $XSOCK:$XSOCK -v $XAUTH:$XAUTH -e XAUTHORITY=$XAUTH xeyes
I just found this blog entry and want to share it here with you because I think it is the best way to do it and it is so easy.
http://fabiorehm.com/blog/2014/09/11/running-gui-apps-with-docker/
PROS:
+ no x server stuff in the docker container
+ no vnc client/server needed
+ no ssh with x forwarding
+ much smaller docker containers
CONS:
- using x on the host (not meant for secure-sandboxing)
in case the link will fail someday I have put the most important part here:
dockerfile:
FROM ubuntu:14.04
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y firefox
# Replace 1000 with your user / group id
RUN export uid=1000 gid=1000 && \
mkdir -p /home/developer && \
echo "developer:x:${uid}:${gid}:Developer,,,:/home/developer:/bin/bash" >> /etc/passwd && \
echo "developer:x:${uid}:" >> /etc/group && \
echo "developer ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL" > /etc/sudoers.d/developer && \
chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.d/developer && \
chown ${uid}:${gid} -R /home/developer
USER developer
ENV HOME /home/developer
CMD /usr/bin/firefox
build the image:
docker build -t firefox .
and the run command:
docker run -ti --rm \
-e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY \
-v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
firefox
of course you can also do this in the run command with sh -c "echo script-here"
HINT: for audio take a look at: https://stackoverflow.com/a/28985715/2835523