Run node from a docker container

Based on ubuntu:16.04 image, as www-data user with gosu, with some extra packages & modules.

docker pull mgcrea/node:6

• packages added:

build-essential
ffmpeg
git
graphicsmagick-imagemagick-compat
iputils-ping
jq
libav-tools
libcairo2-dev
libgif-dev
libjpeg8-dev
libkrb5-dev
libpango1.0-dev
libudev-dev
libx11-xcb1
libxcomposite1
libxdamage1
libxi6
libxtst6
libnss3
libcups2
libxss1
libxrandr2
libgconf2-4
libasound2
libatk1.0-0
libatk-bridge2.0-0
libgtk-3-0
mediainfo
nano
net-tools
openssl
rsync
screen
software-properties-common
tmux
vim

• node_modules added:

nodemon
yarn

docker run -d --restart=always \
  -v /srv/www:/srv/www \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  --name container_name \
  mgcrea/node:6

docker-compose up -d

You can easily override the user/group used by the image using environment variables. Like in the following compose example:

# https://docs.docker.com/compose/yml/

node:
  container_name: node
  hostname: node
  image: mgcrea/node:6
  environment:
    - NODE_USER=www-data
    - NODE_GROUP=www-data
    - UID=33
    - GID=33
  ports:
    - "3000:3000"
  volumes:
    - ./www:/srv/www
  restart: always

NOTE: for security reasons, starting this docker container will change the permissions of all files in your www directory to a new, docker-only user. This ensures that the docker container can access the files.

Create and inspect a new instance

docker run --rm -it mgcrea/node:latest script -q -c "TERM=xterm /bin/bash" /dev/null

Inspect a running instance

docker exec -it test_node script -q -c "TERM=xterm /bin/bash" /dev/null