ROS docker images for nvidia

Docker Hub link

This repo hosts Dockerfiles that apply a patch on top of the osrf/ros docker images. This patch fixes opengl based programs when run under docker with nvidia acceleration.

The patch basicaly consists of adding libglvnd and activating it for nvidia.

NOTE: The patching methodology in this repo can be applied similarly on other docker images as well. Feel free to use the generic patch-opengl-<ubuntu_version>.dockerfile for your own uses.

How to use

These instructions are for docker version 19.03 or later, which removes the need for nvidia-docker2 However, this should work well under nvidia-docker v2 as well.

Prerequisites

• docker 19.03 or later
• nvidia-container-runtime

To verify if your prerequisites work, you should be able to see a table with nvidia details when you run:

docker run --gpus all nvidia/cuda:9.0-base nvidia-smi

Examples

RVIZ (ROS Kinetic)

I usually add these to my .bashrc (but you can also run them manually on each shell if you prefer):

# prepare for running dockerized GUIs
xhost +local:docker &> /dev/null # actually only needs to be run once per system boot (though rerunning is harmless, so you can also just put it in your .bashrc)
DOCKER_COMMON_ARGS="--gpus all --env=NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all --env=NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=all --env=DISPLAY --env=QT_X11_NO_MITSHM=1 -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix:rw"
# Feel free to add e.g. "--privileged" or remove things from DOCKER_COMMON_ARGS to, if you want
# For Intel graphics, you'll want to remove "--gpus all --env=NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all --env=NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=all"
# and add "--device=/dev/dri:/dev/dri"

Normally, you could use e.g. these commands:

# start a roscore (if none is running already)
docker run -it --rm --net=host --privileged $DOCKER_COMMON_ARGS osrf/ros:kinetic-desktop-full roscore
# run rviz
docker run -it --rm --net=host --privileged $DOCKER_COMMON_ARGS osrf/ros:kinetic-desktop-full rviz

These would work fine on Intel graphics (given that you adjusted DOCKER_COMMON_ARGS for Intel Graphics as suggested above), but won't work on Nvidia graphics.

For Nvidia, you can now use these commands instead:

# start a roscore (if none is running already)
docker run -it --rm --net=host --privileged $DOCKER_COMMON_ARGS koenlek/ros-nvidia:kinetic-desktop-full roscore
# run rviz
docker run -it --rm --net=host --privileged $DOCKER_COMMON_ARGS koenlek/ros-nvidia:kinetic-desktop-full rviz

RVIZ (ROS Melodic or newer)

Good news! This should work with the vanilla docker images (as they already contain libglvnd):

# start a roscore (if none is running already)
docker run -it --rm --net=host --privileged $DOCKER_COMMON_ARGS osrf/ros:melodic-desktop-full roscore
# run rviz (melodic)
docker run -it --rm --net=host --privileged $DOCKER_COMMON_ARGS osrf/ros:melodic-desktop-full rviz

Troubleshooting

First, make sure that non-accelerated GUIs work:

docker run -it --rm --net=host --privileged $DOCKER_COMMON_ARGS koenlek/ros-nvidia:kinetic-desktop-full roscore
# run RQT
docker run -it --rm --net=host --privileged $DOCKER_COMMON_ARGS koenlek/ros-nvidia:kinetic-desktop-full rqt

If rqt crashes, then you need to fix running basic GUIs through docker first. Fixing that is out of the scope of this README.

Known issues

You'll probably see console errors like:

QXcbConnection: XCB error: 2 (BadValue), sequence: 588, resource id: 400, major code: 130 (Unknown), minor code: 3

My experience is that these can safely be ignored.