Docker container images with "headless" VNC session

This repository contains a Docker image with headless VNC environments for Automation Testing.

Each Docker image is installed with the following components:

• Desktop environment Xfce4 or IceWM
• VNC-Server (default VNC port 5901)
• noVNC - HTML5 VNC client (default http port 6901)
• Browsers:
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Chromium
• Python3.8 with pip
• OpenJDK 1.8.0
• Nodejs with protractor and Typescript

Current provided OS & UI sessions:

OpenShift / Kubernetes

It's also possible to run the images in container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes or OpenShift. For more information how to deploy containers in the cluster, take a look at:

• Kubernetes usage of "headless" VNC Docker images
• OpenShift usage of "headless" VNC Docker images

Usage

Usage is similar for all provided images, e.g. for consol/centos-xfce-vnc:

• Build an image from scratch:

  docker build  -t docker:final .
  

• Run command with mapping to local port 5901 (vnc protocol) and 6901 (vnc web access):

  docker run -d -p 5901:5901 -p 6901:6901 docker:final
  

• Change the default user and group within a container to your own with adding --user $(id -u):$(id -g):

  docker run -d -p 5901:5901 -p 6901:6901 --user $(id -u):$(id -g) consol/centos-xfce-vnc
  

• Run the container with root access:

  docker run -d -p 5901:5901 -p 6901:6901 -u 0 docker:final
  

• If you want to mount a local directory to the container use the below command

  docker run --name npminstall -v <absolute_local_directory>:<container_directory>  -p 5901:5901 -p 6901:6901 -e VNC_RESOLUTION=1920x960 --shm-size=1g -u 0 docker:npminstall
  

Connect & Control

If the container is started like mentioned above, connect via one of these options:

• connect via VNC viewer localhost:5901, default password: vncpassword
• connect via noVNC HTML5 full client: http://localhost:6901/vnc.html, default password: vncpassword
• connect via noVNC HTML5 lite client: http://localhost:6901/?password=vncpassword