Using containers (Docker/Singularity) in science

Storing your containers on Docker Hub

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 5 min
Questions

  • Where can I store my containers?

Objectives

  • Learn how to upload your containers to Docker Hub

Sharing/storing containers

Using containers locally is great, but what if you lost your workstation and would like to quickly retrieve your container? Or what if you would like to share your container with collaborators?

You can upload your containers to a public repository called Docker Hub. It’s a free and unlimited service, but requires your to first register here. After registering you need to log in in your console:

docker login

Docker Hub takes container image names very seriously. Each image name has two components username and image name: <username>/<image_name>. For example filo/fsl_with_conda. To be able to upload an image to Docker Hub we need to rename it appropriately. In the folder without our Dockerfile we can add a new alias to our image:

docker build -t <username>/fsl_with_conda .

Now we are ready to upload the image:

docker push <username>/fsl_with_conda

After this process is finished we will be able to see the image listed on Docker Hub. For me this will be at https://hub.docker.com/u/filo/.

But does this work? Can I retrieve the image? Lets remove the local copy first

docker rmi fsl_with_conda <username>/fsl_with_conda

Exercises:

  1. Can you run fsl_with_conda?
  2. What about <username>/fsl_with_conda?

Key Points