signal

Run Signal Desktop in a Debian Docker container

How It Works

The docker run invocations below allow you to run GUI applications inside a Docker container by sharing your workstation's X11 socket with the container.

How To (Basic)

User your parent workstation's home directory for Signal Desktop's persistent data. Your entire home directory will be mounted in the container.

• Build the container image.

docker build [--no-cache] -t signal .

• Run the image.

docker run -it --rm \
  -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY \
  -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
  -v $HOME:/home/signal \
  signal

How To (Optional Advanced)

Create a Docker volume for persistent data. Your workstation's home directory will not be mounted in the container.

• Build the container image.

docker build [--no-cache] -t signal .

• Build a volume to house your persistent data.

docker volume create signal

• Inspect new volume to find the path to the volume's data directory.

docker volume inspect signal | grep Mount

This will return "Mountpoint": "/path/to/docker/volumes/signal/_data",

• Set user and group permissions on the data directory to match your primary user and group on the parent workstation. Use the path to the volume's data directory found above.

sudo chown -R [your_user]:[your_group] /path/to/docker/volumes/signal/_data

• Run the image.

docker run -it --rm \
  -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY \
  -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
  --mount type=volume,source=signal,destination=/home/signal/.config/Signal \
  signal

Reference

• http://fabiorehm.com/blog/2014/09/11/running-gui-apps-with-docker/