Virtualization – Manuel Bogner's Blog

docker on mac without docker-desktop

Manuel Bogner — Sun, 12 Dec 2021 15:25:15 +0000

I just had a discussion where I was told that docker-desktop isn’t usable anymore because of their new licensing. So I had a look if docker-desktop is really required. In the end it is just a nicer integration with some desktop app to manage the background vm.

I installed virtualbox and set up a vm with shared host adapter for being able to easily access it via ip. On that ubuntu vm which I access from outside via SSH I installed docker as documented on the official docker documentation and gave my user proper rights to use docker. The vm has proper internet access and can run docker containers with ports mapped to the shared host adapter.

From my mac I installed docker via brew (not desktop) and added a context for the vm:

docker context create vm --description "local ubuntu vm" --docker "host=ssh://manuel@ubuntu"

The “ubuntu” hostname was added to my /etc/hosts with the configured ip of the vm and manuel is my ssh user on the vm.

With the new context created the context list looks like this:

➜  ~ docker context ls
NAME                TYPE                DESCRIPTION                               DOCKER ENDPOINT                                KUBERNETES ENDPOINT   ORCHESTRATOR
default *           moby                Current DOCKER_HOST based configuration   unix:///var/run/docker.sock                                          swarm
desktop-linux       moby                                                          unix:///Users/manuel/.docker/run/docker.sock                         
vm                  moby                local ubuntu vm                           ssh://manuel@ubuntu

After switching the context to `vm` I can easily work with docker running on the vm.

docker context use vm

With the use of context I was able to come around docker-desktop completely. So the argument that docker isn’t usable anymore on a non linux machine is busted.

clone and reset virtual machine for easy cloning

Manuel Bogner — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 17:22:20 +0000

I wrote a small script and posted it on github that helps cloning vms based on kvm qemu. Came quite handy if multiple clones of a golden image are required.

Custom Ubuntu Starter / Menu Entry

Manuel Bogner — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 12:58:33 +0000

Sometimes I am installing software and would like to have a starter entry in the menu or the sidepanel but some programs don’t create one. But it’s quite easy to add a custom runner.

Just create a file somewhere on your disk. I used my home directory (~) and Postman as an example app – here my ~/postman.desktop file:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Postman
Exec=/opt/Postman/Postman
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=/opt/Postman/app/resources/app/assets/icon.png
StartupWMClass=Postman
Comment=collaboration platform for API development
Categories=Development;

With this file in place you have to decide to install it for all users or for a single user only.

For all users run

sudo desktop-file-install ~/postman.desktop

or for you active user run

desktop-file-install --dir=$HOME/.local/share/applications ~/postman.desktop

After running one of those commands you will find the starter in the menu.

remove qemu libvirt user from lightdm login screen

Manuel Bogner — Sun, 01 Dec 2019 14:01:41 +0000

After installing kvm on my enlightenment 5 system I had a login for qemu libvirt to choose in the login screen. To remove it I ran:

printf "[User]\nSystemAccount=true\n" | sudo tee /var/lib/AccountsService/users/libvirt-qemu
sudo systemctl restart accounts-daemon.service

On the next login the entry was gone.

Install KVM on Ubuntu 14.04

Manuel Bogner — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 22:16:48 +0000

First install needed packages:

sudo apt-get install qemu-kvm libvirt-bin bridge-utils

And configure a network bridge in /etc/network/interfaces. Here is my complete file:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug eth0
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual

auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
        bridge_ports eth0
        bridge_stp on
        bridge_maxwait 0
        bridge_fd 0