28  Install Docker

Docker is a useful way to run linux in containers on systems that don’t have a built in linux (Mostly Macs since the Linux Subsystem for Windows came along).

Setting it up so that you can have a sandbox linux environment on your Mac is pretty easy.

28.1 Example

In this example, we will show how to create a minimal installation of Ubuntu, link it to a folder on your host system so that you can move files back and forth, then install OpenBUGS, a stats program that runs only on Linux or Windows.

28.2 Create folders

Figure out what folder you want to share between your mac and the linux container

I’m using

/Users/icrucrob/Documents/Datasets/docker_shared

to create a folder, start a terminal, navigate to wherever you want with cd and then use mkdir

cd /Users/icrucrob/Documents/Datasets/mkdir

docker_shared

28.3 Create specification for a docker container (dockerfile)

cd /Users/icrucrob/Documents/Datasets/

nano docker_minimal

Paste the following text in to nano, then press CTRL + x followed by y and then enter to save the dockerfile and quit nano.

FROM ubuntu:20.04

# Update package repositories and install packages
RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get clean && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

28.4 Build the docker container

docker buildx build -t minimal-ubuntu -f ./docker_minimal .

If successful, you should see something like this

[+] Building 9.5s (7/7) FINISHED docker:desktop-linux => [internal] load .dockerignore 0.0s 
=> => transferring context: 2B 0.0s => [internal] load build definition from docker_minimal 0.0s 
=> => transferring dockerfile: 574B 0.0s => [internal] load metadata for docker.io/library/ubuntu:20.04 1.6s 
=> [auth] library/ubuntu:pull token for registry-1.docker.io 0.0s 
=> [1/2] FROM docker.io/library/ubuntu:20.04@sha256:ed4a42283d9943135ed8 3.5s 
=> => resolve docker.io/library/ubuntu:20.04@sha256:ed4a42283d9943135ed8 0.0s 
=> => sha256:bf40b7bc7a11b43785755d3c5f23dee03b08e988b32 2.30kB / 2.30kB 0.0s 
=> => sha256:96d54c3075c9eeaed5561fd620828fd6bb5d80eca 27.51MB / 27.51MB 1.7s 
=> => sha256:ed4a42283d9943135ed87d4ee34e542f7f5ad9ecf2f 1.13kB / 1.13kB 0.0s 
=> => sha256:218bb51abbd1864df8be26166f847547b3851a89999ca7b 424B / 424B 0.0s 
=> => extracting sha256:96d54c3075c9eeaed5561fd620828fd6bb5d80ecae7cb25f 1.7s 
=> [2/2] RUN apt-get update && apt-get clean && rm -rf /var/lib/ 4.3s 
=> exporting to image 0.0s 
=> => exporting layers 0.0s 
=> => writing image sha256:8d6b3dce84d6cf918e6ca8f2ec806ddd3aa1a018f8447 0.0s 
=> => naming to docker.io/library/minimal-ubuntu 0.0s

28.5 Start the container

docker run -it -v /Users/icrucrob/Documents/Datasets/docker_shared:/chrissy minimal-ubuntu

You should now be able to start and stop the container using the GUI of the docker dashboard. Access the terminal through the exec tab.

Any files you put in the shared folder will persist on both machines.

28.6 Install dependencies

This should be done in the docker container’s terminal

apt update

apt upgrade

apt install curl

apt install cmake

apt install gcc

apt install gcc-multilib

apt install man-db

apt install gawk

28.7 Get the OpenBUGS source

curl https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/OpenBUGS-3.2.3.tar.gz –output OpenBUGS-3.2.3.tar.gz

28.8 Install OpenBUGS

tar -xvzf OpenBUGS-3.2.3.tar.gz

cd OpenBUGS-3.2.3

./configure

make

make install

unminimize

28.9 Check the installation

OpenBUGS

If it is working, you should see the OpenBUGS prompt

OpenBUGS version 3.2.3 rev 1012
type 'modelQuit()' to quit
OpenBUGS>