Docker image and container setup

We have provided a Docker image that has all the tools we will be using pre-installed. If you are unfamilar with Docker/containers, there are many online tutorials available (e.g. here). Essentially Docker provides a lightweight “virtual” environment, permitting you to run different architectures/operating systems and libraries/platform environments on a machine. You will need to install Docker on your system.

The standard Dockerfile we will use is the following. Please feel free to customize as you see fit!

FROM rajitmanohar/act_sky130:latest

USER root
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get -y install tightvncserver ssh vim emacs awesome gnuplot xterm
RUN echo root:rootpass | chpasswd && echo user:userpass | chpasswd

USER root

CMD service ssh start ; while true ; do sleep 3600; done;

This starts with the pre-built Docker image rajitmanohar/act_sky130:latest and extends it by installing a number of packages. The base operating system is Linux (Ubuntu). It also sets the password for the user account user to userpass, and the root password to rootpass. Finally, it starts the ssh service so you can use ssh to connect to your docker container. Feel free to customize this to install any software/tools/etc. you might want.

To build an image using the Dockerfile above (saved as Dockerfile in your working directory), run:

$ docker build -t async - < Dockerfile

This will use the Dockerfile to build an image named async.

There are many ways to start docker containers. A simple setup that we use is to have a shared directory between the container and the host machine where you are running docker, and forward port 7500 from the host machine to the ssh port (22) in the container. The following command will accomplish this.

$ docker run -d -p 7500:22 -v /path/to/directory:/share async

The /share directory in the container will correspond to the specified path on the host.

Note: a container is like a running machine; if you stop the container using docker, that is the same as powering off a machine. Docker allows you to pause a container, which is useful if you want to leave the machine “in suspension” so that it stops using CPU resources on your system.

At this point, you can connect to the container using the ssh command

$ ssh -p 7500 user@localhost

To connect to a graphical environment in the container, we can use the VNC remote desktop system (e.g. TightVNC). Once you've logged in to the container, run:

$ vncserver

and follow the prompts to setup a password. This will start the vnc server within the container. The vnc server will report a display (usually :1), and the network port it listens to is 5900 plus the display number.

To connect to the running graphical environment within the container, use ssh to connect the container as follows:

$ ssh -p 7500 -L 8500:localhost:5901 user@localhost

Now the local port 8500 on the host will correspond to the VNC port. You can now connect to port 8500 on your local machine using a VNC client to get a graphical desktop that is running on the container.

Note that once the container is setup, you don't need to re-do those steps. You can simply pause the container to stop it, and resume it when you want to re-connect to it via ssh.