Basics of Docker

I am brand new to docker, so I though I might start documenting docker from the perspective of a beginner. I will come back and correct any bad info as necessary.

Mental Model

Docker data structures are similar to git. If you understand the git (Merkle Trees), then you would understand the docker data structure.

Running an Interactive Session

Assuming you want to start a docker image, you are gonna need a command like this. The ‘i’ stands for interactive. ‘t’ stands for tty.

docker run -it ubuntu bash

Running a GUI

Some of the guides out there I found to be a little complex if you are looking for something easily copy-and-pasteable.

#Host machine
XAUTH_COOKIE=$(xauth list | head -n 1 | sed -e s/:/$(echo $DISPLAY)/g)
docker run -it --net=host -e DISPLAY -e XAUTH_COOKIE="$XAUTH_COOKIE" -v /tmp/.X11-unix ubuntu bash

#Docker container
apt update; apt install -y xauth; xauth add $XAUTH_COOKIE;

#Test it. Make sure you don't have pinta on your host machine running otherwise X seems to get confused and create a new window for your host install of pinta.
apt install -y pinta; pinta

See also:

1. Geeks for Geeks
2. CloudSavvyIt
3. FabioRehm

Sharing data with the host

To do this effectivly you have to understand a little bit more about how docker works and the relevant permissions.

So yes, the below command will technically work, the problem though is, the dockerworkspace folder on the host machine will be owned by root. Meaning to interact with it in any way you will need to be root.

docker run -v ~/dockerworkspace:/workspace ubuntu

I think you will find the below series of commands much more effective.

#On the host machine create mappings of the permissions config files.
PERM_CONF="-v /etc/passwd:/etc/passwd -v /etc/group:/etc/group -v /etc/shadow:/etc/shadow"
perm_conf=( $PERM_CONF )
#Run your docker container providing the permissions config files.
docker run -it -v ~/dockerworkspace:/workspace "${perm_conf[@]}" ubuntu

#When the mountbind is created it will be owned by root.  You can fix that like this. 
chown normalHostUser workspace/
chgrp normalHostGroup workspace/

#Now login to your normal host user account.
su normalHostUser

#Create a file with permissions that your normal host user will be able to access.
touch /workspace/createNonRootOwnedFile

#Logout of normalHostUser (on docker)
exit

#Logout of root (on docker)
exit

#Confirm it worked (on host)
ls -la ~/dockerworkspace
total 8
drwxr-xr-x  2 normalHostUser normalHostGroup 4096 Jun  6 14:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 35 normalHostUser normalHostGroup 4096 Jun  6 14:50 ..
-rw-rw-r--  1 normalHostUser normalHostGroup    0 Jun  6 14:55 createNonRootOwnedFile

See Also:

1. Stack Overflow: Share Files Between host system and docker container
2. Marc Campbell: Understanding how uid and gid work in Docker containers