JDock - Docker'ed IJulia containers

What works

Runs each IJulia session in its own sandboxed container
A bash session is aslo started in the container - can be used to run the Julia console REPL
File transfer facility into a session's container
Basic admin screen to delete old/inactive sessions
Support Google auth
Auto cleanup of sessions based on inactivity
Limiting the memory usage by a user session

Pending

Google drive integration
Limiting disk usage by session
Upload .ipynb notebooks by URLs directly into the container
Security improvements
More complete Admin interface
Prettier UI
Launching remote docker instances

Installing

The setup script has been tested to work on a fresh Ubuntu 13.04 AMI - viz, ami-ef277b86, but should work on any 13.04 system
If on EC2, launch an instance from ami-ef277b86 . Make sure you open up ports 22 (ssh) and 80 (http) in your security group
On a 13.04 system, make sure your id has sudo permissions
Run the following :

sudo apt-get install git

git clone https://github.com/amitmurthy/JDock.git

cd JDock

setup.sh has the following options:

Usage: ./setup.sh  -u <admin_username> optional_args
 -u  <username> : Mandatory admin username. If -g option is used, this must be the complete Google email-id
 -d             : Only recreate docker image - do not install/update other software
 -g             : Use Google Openid for user authentication 
 -n  <num>      : Maximum number of active containers. Deafult 10.
 -t  <seconds>  : Auto delete containers older than specified seconds. 0 means never expire. Default 0.

admin_username above is the session name for an "administration" session. If not using Google auth, select something non-guessable.
Go get a coffee, this while take a while
NOTE : If you are just updating JDock and do not wish to reinstall packages on your host, use the -d option

git pull

./setup.sh -u <admin_username> -d 

./reload.sh

This will just apply any changes to the scripts and nginx config files. Any changes to your nginx config file will be overwritten.

Powering up

cd <path to JDock>; ./start.sh
point your browser to http://<your_host_address>/
stop.sh stops nginx and tornado, while reload.sh restarts the servers

Additional configuration

Create a file called jdock.user in the installation's root directory. It should contain a JSON dictionary of the form

{
  "protected_sessions" : ['amitm'],
  "numlocalmax" : 3,
  "admin_users" : [],
  "mem_limit" : 1000000000,
  "inactivity_timeout" : 300,
  "expire" : 0,
  "dummy" : "dummy"
}

where

protected_sessions are those sessions which will not be timed out and auto-cleaned up numlocalmax is the maximum number of concurrent sessions to be allowed. Default is 10 or the number specified while running ./setup.sh . admin_users is a list of users that have access to the admin tab. Empty means everyone has access. mem_limit is a maximum memory allowed per docker container (running a local nginx, ijulia, bash as well as the users julia sessions). Default is 1GB.

NOTE: To be able to use mem_limit, the host kernel must be configured to support the same. See http://docs.docker.io/en/latest/installation/kernel/#memory-and-swap-accounting-on-debian-ubuntu

inactivity_timeout specifies the time in seconds to wait before clearing an inactive session, for example, when the user closes the browser window . Default is 300 seconds. protected_sessions are not affected.

expire specifes an upper time limit for a user session before it is auto-deleted. 0 means never expire. protected_sessions are not affected.

You will need to run reload.sh for any changed parameters to take affect.

Notes

On EC2, the containers are created on the ephemeral volume. They do not persist across a system start/stop
NGINX and embedded Lua (from http://openresty.org/) and tornado have been used to build the web interface
Not recommended to host on the public internet just yet.
Security is mostly a TODO at this time.
Docker itself is undergoing changes in its API. Since we pull in the latest docker, changes in the docker API may break JDock at any time.
To get the latest Julia build onto the docker image, you have have to build it with the -no-cache option.
For example, ./setup.sh executes sudo docker build -t ijulia docker/IJulia/.
To update docker image ijulia with the latest Julia version run sudo docker build -no-cache -t ijulia docker/IJulia/
docker is an evolving project, sometimes unwanted images take up unecessary disk space. To clear them run sudo docker rmi $(sudo docker images | grep "^<none>" | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 3)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Code examples from the below projects/websites have been used
Docker - http://www.docker.io/
OpenResty - http://openresty.org/
Lua Resty HTTP Client - https://github.com/bakins/lua-resty-http-simple

License

erezool/JDock

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