Can you run GUI applications in a Docker container?

Question

How can you run GUI applications in a Docker container?

Are there any images that set up vncserver or something so that you can - for example - add an e

Answer 1

I managed to run a video stream from an USB camera using opencv in docker by following these steps:

1. Let docker access the X server

   xhost +local:docker
   

2. Create the X11 Unix socket and the X authentication file

   XSOCK=/tmp/.X11-unix
   XAUTH=/tmp/.docker.xauth
   

3. Add proper permissions

   xauth nlist $DISPLAY | sed -e 's/^..../ffff/' | xauth -f $XAUTH nmerge -
   

4. Set the Qt rendering speed to "native", so it doesn't bypass the X11 rendering engine

   export QT_GRAPHICSSYSTEM=native
   

5. Tell Qt to not use MIT-SHM (shared memory) - that way it should be also safer security-wise

   export QT_X11_NO_MITSHM=1
   

6. Update the docker run command

   docker run -it \
              -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY \
              -e XAUTHORITY=$XAUTH \
              -v $XSOCK:$XSOCK \
              -v $XAUTH:$XAUTH \
              --runtime=nvidia \
              --device=/dev/video0:/dev/video0 \
              nvcr.io/nvidia/pytorch:19.10-py3
   

Note: When you finish the the project, return the access controls at their default value - xhost -local:docker

More details: Using GUI's with Docker

Credit: Real-time and video processing object detection using Tensorflow, OpenCV and Docker