Can I wrap a custom desktop application in a docker container? - docker

I would like to wrap a custom desktop application (don't have access to source code just the .exe and .msi) in a docker container from windows OS and share the image to my team to enable them access from windows OS. Could someone let me know if this is possible or please point me in the right direction (possibly a tutorial as I couldn't find it)?

No, Docker does not run Windows binaries. The Docker for Windows products run Linux inside of a VM as the Docker host and all containers are Linux based.

Related

Detect Docker for Windows vs Docker Native inside of WSL2 VM

So I have a use case where I need to detect inside of a WSL2 VM whether the Docker setup is Docker for Windows w/ WSL integration vs Docker just running inside of the WSL VM (say installed directly via apt or dnf). The networking situation between these two use cases is different because with Docker for Windows WSL integration you cannot reach containers by their IP from the WSL VM. This poses some problems for some dev-tooling that we have and wasn't previously an issue with devs running on Linux-native machines but we've recently run into it now that some devs are using Windows machines with WSL and Docker for Windows.
Any thoughts on how I can do this? Look for specific env vars, mount points etc?
Looks like I can just stat /mnt/wsl/docker-desktop and see if that exists.

Docker Windows container running DLL's

I work at a lab and we have some devices that use DLL’s to connect to our computers and exchange data, I’m building a docker container from which we will run experiments and communicate with many different devices, most of them use python libraries or a DAQ (that can also be used from python), but some use DLL’s.
My questions are:
Can I have Linux running on my machine and have Windows as the container’s OS?
Will I be able to connect using the DLL’s with this setup?
Will I be able to use the DLL’s if my machine does not run Windows 10 PRO (we use
win8 home and plan to upgrade to win10 home)?
Can I use these DLL’s from inside the container? Do they need to be in the container?
1.- Docker has two host container types, windows and linux, only windows host type (windows machine) can run windows containers and linux containers, because you can run net framework in windows containers, and linux host only run linux containers.
2.- If you dll use cross platform net core, you can run in both docker hosts linux and windows, but you has libraries that use net framework , you can use windows host container, you can migrate to net core via nuget ,i made in c#
3.- Even you has enable in bios processor option and your machine has hardware requirements, you can use docker, find more here
4.- I recommend use a existent official image, only you need add your code , you can find here and check samples

Can a linux app run on windows using Docker?

I am aware of this question (Can Windows Containers be hosted on linux?), but it doesn't really answer my question.
I am new to Docker, but my question is such - if I take any windows application, put it inside a Docker container, can it run now on Linux and vice versa?
Confluent claims that it can run only on linux, but my colleague installed it on Windows using Docker. So if you can install it with Docker, then the whole application would surely be regarded as cross platform?
I think I am missing some important point here.
Docker is not a VM, it's a way to run applications on a shared kernel that isolate those applications from each other. Windows binaries don't run on a Linux kernel, and vice versa (ignoring the Linux runtime for Windows for the time being). So if you build a container with your Windows application, it will only run if you did so on Dockers Windows runtime and windows base image. It's won't run on a Linux host.
What docker does provide is an embedded VM running Linux (originally this was VirtualBox, but current versions are HyperV). By running Docker for Windows, by default, this VM was used and you would only be running Linux containers, so your windows application would not even run inside the container. To run the Windows binaries, you need to toggle Docker for Windows to use the Windows runtime, and presently that's a toggle, you can't run both Linux and Windows runtimes concurrently on the same host.
There also is no Windows VM packaged with Docker's Linux install. You would need to install your own copy of Windows (and get the licensing which is why Docker doesn't ship this) inside a VM on a Linux host and run your containers inside that VM if you need Windows support.

windows docker on vmwarevsphere

we use VMWare vSphere for VMs in our company.
To automatically create docker hosts we use one simple command:
docker-machine --driver vmwarevsphere .... vm params(cpu,memory,network,name, etc)
It automatically creates new VM machine in our VM cluster, installs docker and then we add it to swarm or create new.
Right now I need to create windows docker hosts to run windows containers.
Docker-machine installs boot2docker.iso after creating VM.
But instead I need VM with microsoft servercore or nano.
How do I do it?
Thanks a lot.
Anton
On a Windows machine with Docker for Windows installed you could run the following command to pull the official images for server or nanoserver
docker pull microsoft/nanoserver
or
docker pull microsoft/windowsservercore
I'm not exactly sure how you're automating this - are you using a dockerfile or docker compose?
Are you talking about setting up the Windows host that runs Docker engine? If so, Docker for Windows CE is meant to be desktop software so not recommended for server side workload. Also, Windows EE Server requires Windows Server 2016 or later. If you would really like to use Windows server core mode, Windows Server 1709 offers that. Still, it quite bit new, so you should not set high expectations just yet.
As per the instruction to install the engine, MS has this.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick-start/quick-start-windows-server
Or, equivalent one from Docker here.
https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/windows/docker-ee/
you are talking about hosting a windows container on VMware vSphere? I don't think this is possible right now, may be in the future. I have no documentation or link to verify my answer but in our company we have a similar situation and use vSphere for VMs and Linux container and Hyper-V in parallel for VMs and windows container.

Using commands in bluemix user interface

I need to use docker container in bluemix but my laptop does not support docker so I can't use the commands to run docker in bluemix using the CLI plug-ins.
Is there any other way to do this?
Why can't you run it on your laptop? Docker can run in some flavor on most operating systems (albeit within a VM on some).
You have a number of options though:
Run it inside a linux virtual machine locally
Run it inside a cloud linux virtual machine
Run it inside a cloud container - Yes, you can actually run Docker inside a Docker container.
Install a linux OS as a dual boot option on your laptop and run Docker there.
Edit: formatting
which OS does your notebook run?
Docker supports Linux, OSX and Windows as well, and you could choose to use cf container plugin (cf ic), docker or also ice client.
Here you could find Bluemix documentation related to container

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