What is DockerBash?

• Temporarily run a separate os
  • Similar to using a headless VM but easier to create
• Try out software in an encapsulated way without affecting the host
  • Just like docker was inteded, but in a more interactive way
• Easy management of all docker-bash containers
  • Creating / Deleting with bash autocompletion
  • Temporary containers
  • Provide simple way to add other Linux distributions

Requirements

sudo apt install docker.io
# sudo apt install docker-compose  # Not needed for docker-bash

Add user to docker group

sudo groupadd docker # Group probably already created when installing docker
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Reboot is required.

Usage

1. Run db-rebuild-image on a new system
   1. Run db-rebuild-image-from-scratch to re-create an existing image
2. Run db or db-tmp to start a new container
   1. When using optional names it is possible to run multiple docker-bashes i.e.
      1. db ubuntu-test
      2. db bash-test

You can use tab-completion to autofill existing containers for db and db-rm commands.

You can list existing containers with:

db-ls

Add new distribution

• Add new folder to distributions
• Add Dockerimage
• docker-bash commands will detect new distro automatically and use the folder name as the entry name

Information

The file bash_aliases.sh can be used to change aliases at runtime.

Exposed ports which will also be exposed to the host to make testing of software easier.

The host file-system is available under /host inside of the container.

X11

On Host

xhost +

Container

--env="DISPLAY"
--volume /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix  # Not sure if needed