[Dxspider-support] Docker containerization of DXSpider

Brian Stucker me at kb2s.net
Sun Mar 5 02:28:02 GMT 2023


Hello all,

If you are interested, I have been putting quite a bit of work into getting
DXSpider running well within a Docker container.

My reasons for doing this are:

   - My dxspider client application is isolated from the rest of my linux
   box which provides another layer of security should something go wrong.
   - My user data is entirely separate from the cluster software. Upgrading
   takes two commands to do and rebuilds everything from scratch. This is
   great for testing and ensuring that my setup is configured exactly the same
   each time.
   - Build times are considerably faster with pre-compiled libraries,
   libraries for dxspider do not  are in the container, so I don't have to
   worry about corrupted deployments or different pieces of software on the
   same machine interfering with one another.
   - I can reliably run all of the software as a non-root account in the
   container. Some configurations aren't set up this way, which isn't a great
   idea from a security perspective.
   - I can bring up multiple nodes or versions of the software on the same
   box and connect them together to test things out.

I am not a dxspider guru so I'm sure there are many improvements that could
be made. I also have not extensively tested everything in this yet so DO
NOT use this on your main dxspider deployment without poking at it to your
own satisfaction first. My test environment is debian 10 and debian 11.

Hopefully it can be of some use/help to the community. I highly recommend
considering the use of containers instead of running software directly on
host machines in general, especially if you're using hardware like a
raspberry pi with an SD card for storage. It's just a matter of time until
the SD card fails and you'll have to rebuild the machine. With containers
it is a snap because you're always rebuilding everything from scratch by
default with no hidden dependencies.

Finally, acknowledgements to M0NKC, CT7ALW, and SV5FRI for their
contributions to the community that gave me a good start on this.

kb2s/dxspider-deployment: DX Spider Deployment (Amateur Radio) (github.com)
<https://github.com/kb2s/dxspider-deployment>

73,
Brian - KB2S
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