Run picframe in a docker container?

[junglebells]

I have picframe running on a Raspberry Pi - it works great and we are all in love with the display of family pictures and such.

I am planning to upgrade my Pi to a more powerful ubuntu x64 server, so it can run a few other programs. In that situation, I'd love to still run picframe, but in a docker container, so it remains unaffected by other things that are happening on the server.

Is that a possibility? I do not have much experience with creating docker files - can you help or provide some pointers?

Thanks a lot!

[helgeerbe]

Hi @junglebells,

interessting question. I never tried this with picframe. But here are some hints:

• Run GUI Applications in docker
• Proposal for "Beginner's guide" wiki article #257
  • install picframe on server linux

Would love to get some feedback / how to.

But to be honest, maybe it is much easier to install everything on your ubuntu server. But use a python virtual environment like miniconda for the python part (python version plus everything picframe need as libs).

[paddywwoof]

When developing pi3d and picframe I worked all the time on ubuntu laptop and desktop. But, at it became "live" I tended to do everything SHH to a RPi. I've run picframe a few times since, to check things, on the laptop but not recently. More importantly I've never tried running picframe (or pi3d) in a docker container. It ought to "just work" but I can imagine potential conflicts between different applications if they are trying to access the display or OpenGL resources.

To be honest, docker is something that's been on my to-do list for a long time so I really ought to try it out for my self!

Paddy

[helgeerbe]

I was curious:

I set up a quick proof of concept. Using ubuntu in the docker container and connect it through unix sockets to the host xserver (on rasbian):

My Dockerfile (have not tested, if some packets are redundant):

FROM arm64v8/ubuntu:latest
RUN apt-get -y update && apt-get -y upgrade
RUN apt-get -y install --no-install-recommends \
  python3-pip \
  libopenjp2-7 \
  libgles-dev \
  libatlas3-base \
  libxrender-dev  
RUN python3 -m pip install picframe
CMD ["python3", "-m" , "picframe.start", "/home/pi/picframe_data/config/configuration_docker.yaml"]

version: "3"
services:
  app:
    image: picframe:latest
    build: ./picframe
    environment:
      - DISPLAY=${DISPLAY}
    volumes:
      - /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix
      - /dev/dri/card0:/dev/dri/card0
      - /home/pi/picframe_data:/home/pi/picframe_data
      - /home/pi/Pictures:/home/pi/Pictures
    network_mode: host

I turned webserver and mqtt in configuration.yaml off.

Important in configuration.yaml set: use_glx: False

run:

docker-compose build
docker-compose up

Thats all :)

Performance looks ok. But haven't done any tests. Would be interesting, how good ubuntu is.
Everything runs on my pi 3.

[junglebells]

This is great @helgeerbe
I am away for the weekend, will try when back. Can’t wait. Thanks so much