VNC, ROS and Gnome

Docker image based on Ubuntu 16.04, packed with ROS Kinetic and a Gnome GUI through VNC. It is meant as a plug-and-play for any ROS workspace, allowing the ease of use of Docker and a GUI, often required for comfortable ROS development.

Default image

If your ROS repo is in /home/my_host_user/my_repo, you can run the default image with only:

docker run -p 5900:5900 \
           --volume=/home/my_host_user/my_repo:/home/serial/ros_ws:rw \
           --name ros-container \
           cyrillg/vnc-ros-gnome

It will automatically pull cyrillg/vnc-ros-gnome image from docker-hub.

Once your container is running, you can connect to the desktop with RealVNC, VNC client available as a Chrome extension (other VNC clients might do, but this one has been proven to work). The address is localhost:5900.

Note that, at the time I write this, the shell is not functional through the GUI. You can however access it through:

docker exec -it -u serial ros-container "/bin/bash"

Custom build

Alternatively, the image can be rebuilt with a username different from the default serial. To that effect:

# Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/cyrillg/vnc-ros-gnome.git

cd vnc-ros-gnome/

# Replacing <image-name> and <my-docker-user> by your own choices
docker build . -t <image-name> --build-arg user=<my-docker-user>

The same way as for the default image, if your ROS repo is in /home/my_host_user/my_repo, you can run this newly built image with:

docker run -p 5900:5900 \
           --volume=/home/my_docker_user/my_repo:/home/<my-docker-user>/ros_ws:rw \
           --name ros-container \
           <image-name>

You can also start an interactive shell within the container under your user account with:

docker exec -it -u <my-docker-user> ros-container "/bin/bash"

sr-dev

The vnc-ros-gnome image was created while developing the sr-dev image, meant to give readers of Serial Robotics a ready-to-use environment for the ros-playground ROS workspace.

You might be interested in taking a look at how it builds on top of the vnc-ros-gnome image, and easily creates an environment tailored to a particular ROS project.

Another advantage of the sr-dev for those not familiar with docker is that it can be managed with the sr-cli command-line interface. See the Github page for more info as well as a demo.