seanhoughton/indiserver

INDI Server Container

Runs the INDI server with the requested set of drivers. See INDI for more information about the INDI telescope control project.

Running the containers

Ensure you've installed the required device drivers for your hardware on the host. You only need to install the base drivers that install firmware (e.g. libsbigudrv2, libqhy, etc.), there is no need to install any of the indi packages.

note: the containers run as root to easily get access to USB and TTY devices, more fine-grained permissions for the pi user is left as an excercise for the reader

Run the simulators

sudo docker run -d -p 7624:7624 seanhoughton/indiserver:1.3.1 indi_simulator_telescope indi_simulator_ccd

Run real drivers (don't forget the --privileged flag to allow access to usb devices)

sudo docker run --privileged -v /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb -d -p 7624:7624 seanhoughton/indiserver:1.3.1 indi_sbig_ccd indi_lx200gemini

Or, use docker-compose to make it easier to manage. Note that settings are stored in a named (aka persistent) volume named "config" that will persist accross container restarts. You could also map this to a directory. Also, you may have to modify the device volumes based on your specific hardware setup.

# docker-compose.yml
version: '2'
services:
  indiserver:
    #image: seanhoughton/indiserver:1.3.1    # x86
    image: seanhoughton/rpi-indiserver:1.3.1 # rpi
    command: indi_sbig_ccd indi_qhy_ccd indi_robo_focus indi_lx200gemini
    restart: always
    privileged: true
    volumes:
      - /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb
      - /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0
      - config:/root/.indi
    ports:
      - 7624:7624 
volumes:
  config:

Then run the stack with

sudo docker-compose up -d

You can run the basic

Why use Docker?

Running services in docker provides some nice benefits

• Easy upgrade/downgrade - simply adjust the version number of the image you want to run
• Easy service management - if the server process stops for any reason Docker will restart it, including reboots
• Minimal setup - just install docker and go, no need to install anything related to indi (firmware loading drivers currently do need to be installed on the host)
• Reproducability - if you're having problems a developer can more easily reproduce it in a public container

Setup

The Makefile includes a bootstrap target which installs docker and any hardware drivers. You can customize the DRIVERS_TO_INSTALL value in the makefile. Currently the drivers must be installed on the host because the udev firmware loading rules don't work correctly inside of containers.

make bootstrap

Building the image (optional)

Dockerfiles are included for both x86 (linux) and Raspian base images. To build the images run make

make image