I am a Windows user.
I have looked at the official Docker tutorial "Get Started". The example focus is a python app. I don't know python and I guess a Docker container can have many programs installed as an environment, not just python.
Is Docker good for testing a program I download from the internet in an isolated environment (like a sandbox in firewalls or antivirus) ?
How for example can I make a container that has an environment containing installed programs like Visual Studio, VLC player, Office, etc.?
Thanks,
Abe
Yes; you can have an isolated environment with docker. You can set your desired configurations, download from internet, install, and whatever you do in a Virtual Machine.
Yes, you can. What your container contains depends on the base image you create it FROM and packages you install inside of it.
Tips
You can build your container from an empty OS (e.g. ubuntu), configure the OS, download/install/configure/run whatever you want.
You can create a base image which derives FROM a suitable OS, then install any basic application (e.g. firefox) which you may use in a lot of containers on it. Then you should push it in a registry (e.g. Github). After that, you can use it as a base image for other containers, so your new containers have installed applications by default; no need to install them again. It reduces complexity and repetitions in Dockerfile.
Related
I am a developer who is using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS regularly for my development. I never install any packages like, node, PHP, python in the OS and make use of docker for the purpose. VS Code is the editor I use, and the extension of the remote container will help me to develop & debug inside the docker container.
Right now, I am in the process of moving the development to a windows environment and I wanted to follow a similar workflow there too. Unfortunately, I am facing few issues like "file changes are not getting detected" (when npm serve in angular and react projects).
https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4739
https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/c48yej/wsl_2_react_not_reloading_with_file_changes/
I have tried different methods to solve the issue like
use wsl2 and then docker inside that and then serve from the container
use just docker and serve the code from inside the container
Regardless of the methods, the file changes are not getting detected inside the docker.
Trust me I have gone through many bizarre words like inotify, increasing the watchers, etc... Nothing helped.
Is there a developer out there following a similar practice in a Windows environment? (docker + windows)
Any help is highly appreciated.
I suggest moving the files to the wsl2 file system and not the windows.
Wsl2 'sees' the windows file system from inside a mount image /mnt/c .
Move out of it, like at ~ (cd ~) and i think your files will be normally watched .
We have a large application with several parts running on a Windows VM and I am trying to evaluate Docker containers for our application deployment. Is it possible to create a base docker image from an existing Windows VM already running my application? (I know this can be done using Dockerfile but I am looking for a quick way to create the image)
https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/eng-image/baseimages/
Above link describes creating image from working machine for Linux, but I am looking for something similar for Windows.
The only base image for Windows that I know are the ones proposed by Microsoft, for Windows Server 2016 or 1709.
See "PoC: How to build images for 1709 without 1709"
That means you can translate any Widows VM into an image.
You would need:
a Dockerfile
the right Microsoft base image, which would represent a Windows server one.
Typically:
microsoft/nanoserver,
microsoft/windowsservercore
If you application only runs on a Windows VM, you need to make sure it can be installed and run on one of those base Windows images.
EVen though you are using a VM Windows server 2016, you would not be able to quickly "capture its state": you need a Dockerfile to describe what you want your Widows container to run.
No it's not possible. You have some stuff like Vm2Docker etc but all it does the same thing you will do manually that is enumerate features installed and create some artifacts for you.
But it's not possible to do for third party application as you mentioned. You'd have to disassemble it and figure out how to scripts to install it.
I am looking for a way to have a Development environment of Production web server for our Developers/testers created using Docker on windows.
I have windows server 2016 OS installed on a Physical server (not VM), and want to dockerize it so that Dev team can make changes on it first and once they confirm all working fine then same changes will be done on production web server.
Thanks,
RK.
I am currently trying to understand and learn Docker. I have an app, .exe file, and I would like to run it on either Linux or OSX by creating a Docker. I've searched online but I can't find anything allowing one to do that, and I don't know Docker well enough to try and improvise something. Is this possible? Would I have to use Boot2Docker? Could you please point me in the right direction? Thank you in advance any help is appreciated.
Docker allows you to isolate applications running on a host, it does not provide a different OS to run those applications on (with the exception of a the client products that include a Linux VM since Docker was originally a Linux only tool). If the application runs on Linux, it can typically run inside a container. If the application cannot run on Linux, then it will not run inside a Linux container.
An exe is a windows binary format. This binary format incompatible with Linux (unless you run it inside of an emulator or VM). I'm not aware of any easy way to accomplish your goal. If you want to run this binary, then skip Docker on Linux and install a Windows VM on your host.
As other answers have said, Docker doesn't emulate the entire Windows OS that you would need in order to run an executable 'exe' file. However, there's another tool that may do something similar to what you want: "Wine" app from WineHQ. An abbreviated summary from their site:
Wine is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications
on several operating systems, such as Linux and macOS.
Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual
machine or emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls
on-the-fly, eliminating the performance and memory penalties of
other methods and allowing you to cleanly integrate Windows
applications into your desktop.
(I don't work with nor for WineHQ, nor have I actually used it yet. I've only heard of it, and it seems like it might be a solution for running a Windows program inside of a light-weight container.)
My work laptop is running LinuxMint as the base OS, plus Virtualbox to run Windows 7 which is the actual work environment, usually plus an additional Virtualbox VM to run a different Windows installation in which I do my client project work (I have one VM per client, to avoid messing up my main OS).
But I'm wondering if it's feasible and beneficent to switch to using Docker for the client project stuff? That is, I'd like to keep LinuxMint (to preserve my sanity), and keep Windows ('cause I have to use some MS products), but then instead of that series of "client VM's" use Docker containers?
I'm not entirely clear on how containers are useful. Can I, for instance, have a container in which I've installed dotNET and MS SQL; and then another container where I've installed an Azure Powershell; and a third container where I've installed Java and Eclipse -- and then decide which of these "sets" of software is available on the same common base OS (Windows, with VPN and Outlook and Notepad++)?
This post makes me think I'm asking for a solution from the wrong tool?
Or should I perhaps attack the root problem from a different angle, and ask the following over at Workplace.SE: How to work as a consultant without "cluttering up" one's (Windows) OS with more or less temporary installations of all sorts of software necessary for client projects?
AFAIK there is no WindowsOS ready to be run INSIDE a docker container localy, but they are anounced. See www.docker.com/microsoft and msdn windowscontainers
What you can do is run Linux OSs in docker containers within Windows. But in your case you should run the docker engine in your Mint Linux
Not really an answer, more like several comments -- though it's too long to fit within a comment
First of all I would not run Mint, but that's off the question.
Then, it may probably worth to take a look at How is Docker different from a normal virtual machine?.
Also, as you linked, Docker does not aim (at all) to run several programs. Indeed, their policy is Caas: Container as a Service. So basically one program per container. Saying all that, you can probably run wine within container and run one application on each container (over wine).
Have fun!
Due to a hardware issue, I had to change my work station to another Mac for a few weeks.
It took me a couple of hours to setup everything: Android Studio, git, Apache, MySql, etc...
Could I use a docker image to bundle all my development tools ?
(My goal is to have a "backup" of my development environment that I could start running right away on another machine)
Could I use a docker image to bundle all my development tools ?
That means all your dev tools would be Linux tools working in Linux container, on a Linux host.
You would need to provide that Linux host (on your Mac) through a boot2docker Virtual Machine.
But that also mean you could not directly type "git" from a Mac shell, you would need to connect to your VM first in order to launch your 'git' container and run dome docker run --name=git commands.
So no, this doesn't seem to be a good fit for your backup plan on Mac.
Not necessarily. It kinda depends what you are looking for in a development environment.
I do use it for part of my dev env though.
Vagrant + Docker
My personal approach is to rely on Vagrant to fire up a bunch of environments, some of which being full-fledged VMs and others being lightweight containers.
This is a rather controversial approach though, many people would not agree with it, as the tools overlap, both in terms of platform capability and provisioning.
Docker Containers for 3rd Party Services
My personal approach for this is to use Vagrant to fire up a bunch of different VMs, where one is my main dev VM with tools I use for development (IDEs, editors, SCM tools, etc...), and the rest are Docker containers for 3rd party apps that relate to my daily activities (IRC client, database servers like MySQL or MongoDB, etc...).
This fits my cycle decently as these types of tools (like databases) are not something you generally interact with directly through a tty, but something I'd rather connect to with another tool via an API. So I don't need direct access to them, and I do want them to be isolated and easy to jumpstart and dispose of when I jump between projects.
So, docker containers fit part of my idea of a dev environment, but not necessarily all of it.
Just my use case though. Hope it helps.
Shameless plug: Docker Shell
This tool lets you set up a uniform cross platform development environment inside a docker container.
http://dockershell.io/