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Why would you run Firefox in a Docker container?

• Kye 7y ago
  Possibly for generating previews remotely or with different configurations.
• inetknght 7y ago
  Theoretically, so that Firefox doesn't have trivial access to other files available to my user.
  • xorcist 7y ago
    Running it as a different user should suffice. Anyway, the problem alluded to is probably X11. Any GUI application will be able to do things like sniffing your keyboard and clipboard data. It's hard to do right (but of course isn't reason to not run untrusted applications with low privileges) and one of the things Wayland set out to improve.
    • aidenn0 7y ago
      You can run it in a separate vnc session as well to get isolation from X11, but that's a PITA.
  • minimalist 7y ago
    Use firejail instead. They use similar features (namespaces, seccomp, etc.)
  • Scarbutt 7y ago
    You can run GUI apps from docker?
    • aidenn0 7y ago
      You can run GUI apps across a network, so why not?
      • Scarbutt 7y ago
        ah duh, forgot about how X11 works for a moment.
    • sp332 7y ago
      It takes a little configuration to allow X11 access, but yeah. https://github.com/woahbase/alpine-firefox https://github.com/woahbase/alpine-firefox Heck, Qubes OS https://www.qubes-os.org/ https://www.qubes-os.org/ even runs GUI apps from separate Xen VMs.
    • inetknght 7y ago
      Yes. See also my other reply to basically the same question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21998987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21998987
    • Legogris 7y ago
      jessfraz has a great collection of Dockerfiles for various applications: https://github.com/jessfraz/dockerfiles https://github.com/jessfraz/dockerfiles x11docker provides tooling: https://github.com/mviereck/x11docker https://github.com/mviereck/x11docker
  • yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    Have you looked at firejail?
    • inetknght 7y ago
      I have not. How does it compare, particularly for applications that need X11 to usefully function?
      • yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
        Way easier to use. For X: https://firejail.wordpress.com/documentation-2/x11-guide/ https://firejail.wordpress.com/documentation-2/x11-guide/ EDIT: also, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firejail#Firejail_with_Xephyr https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firejail#Firejail_with_...
• hu3 7y ago
  Automated Acceptance Tests is one use of Firefox inside docker. We do that both for Chrome and Firefox.