docker-headless-vnc

This is a workstation hosted inside a docker container that can be reliably built up to a known working state which includes all the tools I use by default.

To start using this image, either use it directly from the docker command line

docker run -it drjaydenm/docker-headless-vnc

or use it as the base of your own image to customize it

FROM drjaydenm/docker-headless-vnc:latest

Container Setup

All docker commands are available in this repository as VS Code tasks for ease of use whilst editing/updating the image.

Building

docker compose build

Running

docker compose up

The password is stored in the docker-compose.yml file by default, however you can override this at runtime if you like by providing a value for the PASSWORD variable

PASSWORD=mysupersecurepw docker compose up

Bringing it down

docker compose down

Connecting to it

X11 Forwarding over SSH

From your host machine, run the following command to connect to the container via SSH.

ssh -Y user@localhost -p 2222

You should now be able to startup programs from the terminal like some of the examples below

xeyes

xclock

firefox

sublime

If you want to startup the full X11 desktop experience over SSH, you can run

xfce4-session

VNC

There is also a VNC server setup and exposed on port 5901 by default. Connect to it by entering localhost:5901 into your VNC client.

Getting access to your data

To get access to your host data from the container, you can setup volume mounts in the docker-compose.yml file. An example file is in this repository.

Customizing

TBC

Credit

Thanks to Daniel Ruiz de Alegría for his amazing work on the Flat Remix GTK theme and icon packs:

• https://drasite.com/
• https://github.com/daniruiz/flat-remix
• https://github.com/daniruiz/flat-remix-gtk