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Any interest in a dockerised MC?

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mattkhan:
I've been looking into this a bit recently, on paper it looks totally doable but no doubt there will be wrinkles, particularly around audio & running x in the container.

Has anyone looked into this in more detail? especially interested if there are any blocking issues of course :)
Any interest out there in this?

mwillems:
I thought about some kind of containerization option recently when I was setting up my MC windows VM on my Debian server, but ultimately dismissed it as at the time windows support/integration for docker didn't seem very robust (see e.g. http://www.quora.com/What-Windows-applications-can-I-currently-run-inside-a-Docker-container).

It seems to me that there are two primary use cases for a containerized MC: 1) bringing the full functionality of MC for windows to non-windows platforms, and 2) bringing MC for Linux to unsupported Linux/Unix platforms (i.e. NAS boxes). 

Here's the way I see it conceptually, and let me know if I've got any holes in my logic:

A) I'm not sure goal 1) is currently technically feasible given the state of docker/containerization solutions in general right now (although I would be happy to hear otherwise).  If you think there is potential for a windows application container (docker or otherwise) that could bring the functionality of MC for windows (TV Tuner, Theater View, etc.) to Linux, I would enthusiastically participate in trying to get that set up, especially if it had a lower overhead than a full VM instance.

B) 2) seems more feasible, but I guess I wonder how much smaller of a resource footprint a docker container that can run MC would be (As opposed to a minimal linux VM.  Given that MC needs an Xserver, ALSA, and a network stack to run, it seems as though the resource savings from a dockerized version vice a full Linux VM would be small, but I'll admit that's just supposition on my part.  I guess there might be a significant segment of NAS boxes that would support Docker, but not a VM?

I guess I'm just trying to make sure I understand what the desired use case/end state is, and what the design goals would be.

mattkhan:
I was not thinking in terms of trying to run a windows MC in a docker container as I assumed that would be impossible. As you say, a VM is the way to go for that use case atm (and perhaps it would be nice to distribute an appropriate image for that).

The use case here is the 2nd one you list, it's just a case of opening up another route to deploying MC on Linux. A quick google says synology has released a beta version of their software supporting docker. I'm not familiar with the rest of that market though so don't know how commonly VMs are used.

Ultimately the reason I thought about this is that I've been prevaricating about how to upgrade my existing unraid 5 setup which runs in a xen VM on a debian server. The Q is whether I turn it around so that unraid 6 is the master & my VMs would convert to either kvm VMs or docker containers or do I continue as is & just dump unraid in a VM again. Running unraid as the master would avoid the pci passthrough munging I have to do atm so seems like the preferred choice. I've only written a one simple docker container (to run this repo I forked - https://github.com/3ll3d00d/Remote-Wake-Sleep-On-LAN-Server) so far so I thought this might be an interesting thing to try out.

mwillems:

--- Quote from: mattkhan on August 13, 2015, 08:50:05 am ---Ultimately the reason I thought about this is that I've been prevaricating about how to upgrade my existing unraid 5 setup which runs in a xen VM on a debian server. The Q is whether I turn it around so that unraid 6 is the master & my VMs would convert to either kvm VMs or docker containers or do I continue as is & just dump unraid in a VM again. Running unraid as the master would avoid the pci passthrough munging I have to do atm so seems like the preferred choice. I've only written a one simple docker container (to run this repo I forked - https://github.com/3ll3d00d/Remote-Wake-Sleep-On-LAN-Server) so far so I thought this might be an interesting thing to try out.

--- End quote ---

That makes sense; running UNRAID as the base may well work better if you're having to virtualize/passthrough PCI devices; MC seems pretty well-behaved in a VM (at least for server purposes) FWIW.  I'd be interested in the resource difference between the dockerized version and just running a minimal VM.

Out of curiosity, what advantages does running a distro like UNRAID offer over just setting up a normal linux file server with a drive pooling solution like BTRFS or LVM and monitoring it witha web monitor like munin?  I know very little about the ins and outs of UNRAID; is it just about convenience?  Or does it offer distinct functionality?  

mattkhan:

--- Quote from: mwillems on August 13, 2015, 09:09:53 am ---Out of curiosity, what advantages does running a distro like UNRAID offer over just setting up a normal linux file server with a drive pooling solution like BTRFS or LVM and monitoring it with munin?  I know very little about the ins and outs of UNRAID; is it just about convenience?  Or does it offer distinct functionality?

--- End quote ---
unraid provides single parity, mixed drive sizes and drives that remain useable outside of the "raid" setup, I suppose that is jbod+single parity? It also provides "user shares" which are a form of union fs & has minimal hardware requirements. It also gives you pretty poor write performance, a pretty clunky UI (at best, in v5 anyway, I heard the v6 one is shiny) and a bunch of other features that people moan about which I don't use ;D It's been pretty solid for me tbh, no problems with it at all *crosses fingers*.

I went for it as flexraid/snapraid with aufs seemed annoying to setup & freenas seemed to have rather aggressive hardware requirements (loads of ECC RAM for example). In contrast, unraid was pretty much plug and play. I don't have a good reason to change course (I find it hard to maintain interest in storage stuff) at this point really so just roll with the upgrades.

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