Docker for Clawpack

Rather than installing Clawpack and all its dependencies on your computer, if you have Docker installed then you can now use a docker image from the DockerHub Clawpack repositories.

To download an image:

$ docker pull clawpack/v5.4.1_dockerimage

To create a container and run it:

$ docker run -i -t -p 8889:8889 --name clawpack-v5.4.1_container \
    clawpack/v5.4.1_dockerimage

You can change the container name if you wish.

You should now see a prompt like:

root...#

indicating that you are in the container. There will be a directory /clawpack-v5.4.1 that contains the Clawpack installation (including the current master branch of the Clawpack Applications repository).

Running Jupyter notebooks

The form of run command suggested above also allows you to run Jupyter notebooks from port 8889 on your own computer (you can change the port number if you want).

To do so, in the docker container run this command:

root...# jupyter notebook --notebook-dir=/clawpack-v5.4.1/apps/notebooks \
             --ip='*' --port=8889 --no-browser

Then open a browser to:

http://localhost:8889/tree

You should be in the apps/notebooks directory and can browse from there to various notebooks.

You can exit a container (after using ctrl-C to quit the jupyter server if one is running) via:

root...# exit

Restarting a container

You can restart the container via:

docker start -a -i clawpack-v5.4.1_container

Creating your own docker image

If you want to create a new docker image that includes other software in addition to Clawpack, you can find the Dockerile used to create the docker image on dockerhub in the repository https://github.com/clawpack/docker-files.

This might be useful if you want to distribute your own code that depends on Clawpack in a form that’s easy for others to use.

More resources: