backplane/chromium repository overview

⁠chromium

debian:unstable-slim⁠-based dockerization of the Google Chromium web browser

The Dockerfile, seccomp.json, and fonts.conf in this repo were originally forked from jessfraz' chromium stable Dockerfile⁠. This repo contains some minor reformatting and adds site-specific browser helpers.

In order to run this container with Docker Desktop for Mac you will need to install XQuartz⁠

The source code for this image is hosted on GitHub in the backplane/conex repo⁠.

⁠Usage

⁠Site-specific Browser Containers

This container includes a helper script which can be used to run site-specific browsers.

First either get the utility from the repo⁠ or from the container image with this command:

$ docker run --rm backplane/chromium --get-util >chromium_ssb.sh
2023-02-21T19:37:12 entrypoint writing chromium_ssb.sh to STDOUT
$ ls
chromium_ssb.sh
$ chmod +x chromium_ssb.sh

The utility works by creating named Docker volumes based on the "name" you choose. You can make isolated browsers for any purpose, but people often make a work browser, a socialmedia browser, a news browser, etc. These are completely isolated from each other and they retain their storage (including settings and plugins) across container runs.

To create a launch a site-specific browser for work stuff, use this command:

$ ./chromium_ssb.sh work

The program will print it's configuration information and the ID of the container. Then it will open your X server application and start the Chromium browser:

$ ./chromium_ssb.sh work
2023-02-21T21:14:28+0100 chromium_ssb applying OS-specific customizations for macOS
2023-02-21T21:14:28+0100 chromium_ssb exporting host xauth cookie to xauth volume
2023-02-21T21:14:29+0100 chromium_ssb starting container
docker run
--volume /Users/user/Downloads:/home/user/Downloads
--tty
--cpu-quota 75000
--env DISPLAY=host.docker.internal:0
--memory 4g
--name chromium_ssb_work
--security-opt seccomp=/Users/user/.chromium_ssb/seccomp.json
--volume chromium_ssb_work:/data
--volume chromium_ssb__auth:/xauth:ro
--detach
--rm backplane/chromium
--use-gl=swiftshader
--disable-dev-shm-usage
--disable-audio-output
--reset-variation-state
--disable-field-trial-config

3726023d196f14c5f31bf789ad6c01656d18313101dbe0319e20907b36803b31

When you close the last window the container will exit. You can simultaneously open as many different ssb containers as you like. To re-open that browser use the same command as before: ./chromium_ssb.sh work

⁠Monitoring

You can use docker stats to keep an eye on the resources used by each container.

$ docker stats
CONTAINER ID   NAME                  CPU %     MEM USAGE / LIMIT   MEM %     NET I/O           BLOCK I/O         PIDS
484b76f73352   chromium_ssb_reddit   23.94%    311MiB / 4GiB       7.59%     29.8MB / 3.03GB   77.8kB / 291MB    101
cd060f67083b   chromium_ssb_work     57.79%    294.3MiB / 4GiB     7.19%     15.7MB / 7.75GB   32.8kB / 194MB    79

⁠Storage

After launching one or more of these site specific browsers, you will have named storage volumes for each browser and one __auth volume which is used by all of them:

$ docker volume ls
local     chromium_ssb__auth
local     chromium_ssb_news
local     chromium_ssb_test
local     chromium_ssb_work

You can completely remove a browser (all settings, plugins, history, downloads, etc.) with this command:

$ docker volume rm chromium_ssb_work
chromium_ssb_work

⁠Environment Variable Configuration