Running GUI applications inside Docker container

To run GUI applications, we need X11 server.

X11 (or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting with a mouse and keyboard.

We need to forward the X11 socket of our local Linux machine to the Docker Container for it to use directly. Along with this, there is a need to forward the environment variable called display. After that, we need to set the permissions for the server host.

Creating the dockerfile

FROM centos:8
RUN apt-get -y update
RUN apt-get -y install firefox
RUN apt-get -y install xauth

EXPOSE 8887
CMD firefox

The above dockerfile does ,

create centos base image,

runs an apt update on it,

installs Xauth and Firefox,

It then exposes port 1234and ,

runs Firefox,

Xauth simply allows Docker Containers to access the Display Servers.

Copying the Cookie to connect X Server Displays

xauth list

Build the Docker Image

docker build -t os .

Run the Docker Container

docker run -it --net=host -e DISPLAY -v /tmp/.X11-unix os bash

Add the cookie to the list

xauth add <cookie>
xauth list

Run the Firefox Instance from the bash

firefox

Task Description 📄

📌 GUI container on the Docker

🔅 Launch a container on docker in GUI mode

🔅 Run any GUI software on the container

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