aguindehi/debian-firefox repository overview

This image allows you to run the Debian Firefox in container with a persistent profile in a data container while having the GUI application show up on your host's X11 display while having sound playing in pulse audio and printing using cupsd on the host.

The image uses the /tmp/.X11-unix unix domain socket passed to the container using a volume bind to connect to the local X11 server on the host or the more secure XPRA (if available) client and server to provide a virtual X11 server to Firefox, decoupeling your local X11 server from Firefox's X11 server. Xsecurity applies and the startup script automatically uses xhost to enable access from Firefox running under uid 10000 inside the container.

The image supports pulse audio for sound output on the host and automatically reconfigures pulse audio on the fly for network access from the container using cookie authentication with a cookie called .config/pulse/cookie also generated on the fly if not existing. It checks the interface docker0 for it's IP and network and uses that to configure tcp pulse audio server access for the container.

The image uses a cupsd running on the host as a printer server to print from the container.

The image uses a data container for Firefox profile persistence. The startup script allows to backup and restore the Firefox profile from the data container to the host. It also assures that the newest image gets fetched automaticallty should a newer version be available.

To install the Firefox startup script use the following command:

export TARGET_DIR=~/bin

docker run -t -i --rm --env TARGET_UID=$(id -u) --env TARGET_GID=$(id -g) -u root -w /home/firefox -v ${TARGET_DIR}:/install aguindehi/debian-firefox:latest ./install

It will install the script firefox-container into the target directory you specify.

To run Firefox after installation:

~/bin/firefox-container

To backup your Firefox profile data:

~/bin/firefox-container backup

To restore your Firefox profile data:

~/bin/firefox-container restore <filename>

To get a shell inside of the container with mounted data directory:

~/bin/firefox-container bash

To reinstall or update the Firefox startup script and images:

~/bin/firefox-container update

To open an URL from the host's command line in Firefox:

~/bin/firefox-container open-tab http://google.com

~/bin/firefox-container open-win http://google.com

~/bin/firefox-container open-privwin http://google.com

To see the help of the startup script:

~/bin/firefox-container help