noetic_docker

Build and Use Docker Image for Noetic/Gazebo11 Support

• The notes cover options for both with and without NVIDIA GPU support. Where the instructions diverge, you will see options a) NVIDIA and b) Non-NVIDIA. Both variants use the same Dockerfile, but
• These notes are based on using an anecdotal testing
  • NVIDIA variant tested on both Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 18.04 hosts.
  • Non-NVIDIA variant tested on Ubuntu 20.04 using Virtualbox. Using this setup the sim reported a real-time factor of 1.0 and a frame rate of ~2 FPS.

Setup Host

Install and setup docker

a) NVIDIA Option

NVIDIA Install Guide

which includes this test...

sudo docker run --rm --gpus all nvidia/cuda:11.0-base nvidia-smi

b) Non-NVIDIA Option

Install docker on your host. E.g., for Ubuntu 20.04 here are instructions.

Make sure you pass the test...

sudo docker run hello-world

Verify Docker Version

Check your version of Docker, you should see something like...

docker -v
Docker version 20.10.2, build 2291f61

Add local user to the docker group

See Docker: Post-installation steps for Linux

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

You will need to re-login for this to take complete effect, but for a particular bash session you can

su - $USER

Install rocker

Use apt as described in the rocker README.md.

Also required

sudo apt install python3-distutils

Build Docker Image

cd dave/docker
./build.bash dave_noetic

which should generate output that ends with something like...

Successfully built ae7e6aa86be9
Successfully tagged dave_nvidia:2021_07_01_1052
Built dave_nvidia:2021_07_01_1052 and tagged as dave_nvidia:latest

Development Use-Case

Start Container from Image

Use rocker to start a container from the image.

a) NVIDIA Option

The run.bash script wraps the rocker interface...

./run.bash dave_nvidia:latest

### a) Non-NVIDIA Option ###

rocker --devices /dev/input/js0 --dev-helpers --x11 --user --home --git dave:latest

Note that the argument for the `devices` option should be the path to the joystick device on the host. This can be omitted if a joystick is not needed.

## Join Multiple Terminals
You will probably want to have multiple terminal within the container.  To do so, you can execute an interactive bash session in the running container.  A short bash script is supplied which will find the running container by image name and open a new shell in that container.

First, you need to find the ID of the image generated by `rocker`. You can get this from the last line of the `rocker` output, or you can run:

docker ps

and copy the hash of the image corresponding to the container you want to join. Then run the `join.bash` script with this image hash as the argument, as follows:

cd dave/docker ./join.bash <IMAGE_HASH>

e.g.,

cd dave/docker ./join.bash dave_nvidia_runtime

# Test


Ad-hoc testing by running one of the Dave demo's, e.g., [vehicle_examples](vehicle_examples)