Web Desktop on a Docker container

A Web-based ephemeral desktop environment running on a docker container and including a few handy things:

• Firefox
• Google Drive and Cloud Storage access through Odrive
• Sublime Text
• Evince
• Bash-it

TL;DR

On a host with docker and curl available:

source <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fernandosanchezmunoz/nodesktop/master/run_local.sh)

You can connect with a browser to:

http://[YOUR_HOST_IP]:6901

Default password is 'nopassword'

Usage examples

• Run as privileged as current user replicating the identity and password of the host system, mounting your home directory and the host root filesystem under /mnt/root

  docker run -d --privileged --name nodesktop -p 6901:6901 -v $HOME:/mnt/home -v /:/mnt/root -v /etc/group:/etc/group:ro -v /etc/passwd:/etc/passwd:ro -v /etc/shadow:/etc/shadow:ro -v /etc/sudoers.d:/etc/sudoers.d:ro --user $(id -u):$(id -g) fernandosanchez/nodesktop
  

• Run anonymously mounting your home directory (user appears as "default" but has permissions on your directories):

  docker run -d --name nodesktop -p 6901:6901 -v $HOME:/mnt/home fernandosanchez/nodesktop
  

• If you want to get into the container use interactive mode -it and bash

  docker run -it --name nodesktop -p 6901:6901 -v $HOME:/mnt/home --user $(id -u):$(id -g) fernandosanchez/nodesktop /bin/bash
  

Connect & Control

• connect with any web browser: http://YOUR_HOST:6901, default password: nopassword

Hints

Change User of running Container

Per default, all container processes will be executed with user id 1000. You can change the user id as follows:

Using root (user id 0)

Add the --user flag to your docker run command:

docker run -it --user 0 -p 6901:6901 fernandosanchez/nodesktop

Using user and group id of host system

Add the --user flag to your docker run command:

docker run -it -p 6901:6901 --user $(id -u):$(id -g) fernandosanchez/nodesktop

Override VNC environment variables

The following VNC environment variables can be overwritten at the docker run phase to customize your desktop environment inside the container:

• VNC_COL_DEPTH, default: 24
• VNC_RESOLUTION, default: 1280x1024
• VNC_PW, default: my-pw

Example: Override the VNC password

Simply overwrite the value of the environment variable VNC_PW. For example in the docker run command:

docker run -it -p 5901:5901 -p 6901:6901 -e VNC_PW=my-pw fernandosanchez/nodesktop

Example: Override the VNC resolution

Simply overwrite the value of the environment variable VNC_RESOLUTION. For example in the docker run command:

docker run -it -p 5901:5901 -p 6901:6901 -e VNC_RESOLUTION=800x600 fernandosanchez/nodesktop

View only VNC

It's possible to prevent unwanted control via VNC. Therefore you can set the environment variable VNC_VIEW_ONLY=true. If set, the startup script will create a random password for the control connection and use the value of VNC_PW for view only connection over the VNC connection.

 docker run -it -p 5901:5901 -p 6901:6901 -e VNC_VIEW_ONLY=true fernandosanchez/nodesktop

Credits

This was largely forked/adapted from https://github.com/ConSol/docker-headless-vnc-container