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Running ROS in LXD containers

06 Aug 2020

I’d been following ROS tutorials and wanted to try out moveit but found it wasn’t ready for ros-noetic yet. I found linux containers as a convinient way to run different versions operating systems that the different libraries need.

I’ve linked to all the posts I found most useful at the bottom for installing lxd and getting it running. Here I’ll just list the commands and configs that I used.

I liked this post for a simple intro to get lxd and lxc installed along with some explanations.

Now we create two files that describe profiles that our containers can use such that we can run all the ROS programs.

The gui.profile sets up the container to be able to run GUI and audio programs (see useful links for extra info)

config:
  environment.DISPLAY: :0
  environment.PULSE_SERVER: unix:/home/ubuntu/pulse-native
  user.user-data: |
    #cloud-config
    runcmd:
      - 'sed -i "s/; enable-shm = yes/enable-shm = no/g" /etc/pulse/client.conf'
    packages:
      - x11-apps
      - mesa-utils
      - pulseaudio
    write_files:
      - owner: root:root
        permissions: '0644'
        append: true
        content: |
          PULSE_SERVER=unix:/home/ubuntu/pulse-native
        path: /etc/environment
description: GUI LXD profile
devices:
  PASocket1:
    bind: container
    connect: unix:/run/user/1000/pulse/native
    gid: "1000"
    listen: unix:/home/ubuntu/pulse-native
    mode: "0777"
    security.gid: "1000"
    security.uid: "1000"
    type: proxy
    uid: "1000"
  X0:
    bind: container
    connect: unix:@/tmp/.X11-unix/X1
    listen: unix:@/tmp/.X11-unix/X0
    security.gid: "1000"
    security.uid: "1000"
    type: proxy
  mygpu:
    type: gpu
name: gui
used_by: []

ros.profile adds the ROS repositories and sets the user ids such that we have write permission from within the container. Running id in console shows you your user ids.

# use along with GUI profile for rviz and other graphic programs 
config:
  raw.idmap: both 1000 1000 # needed for container to have write permissions in shared disk
  user.user-data: |
    #cloud-config
    runcmd:
      - "apt-key adv --fetch-keys 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.asc'"
      - "apt-add-repository 'http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu'"
      - "apt-add-repository 'http://packages.ros.org/ros2/ubuntu'"
description: ROS
# if not set with: lxc config device add [<remote>:]instance1 <device-name> disk source=/share/c1 path=opt
# devices:
#   share-dir:
#     path: /home/ubuntu/ 
#     source: /home/nick/Projects/ros/melodic-moveit  
#     type: disk
name: ros

Create the profiles

❯ lxc create profile gui
❯ lxc create profile ros
❯ cat Documents/containers/lxd/gui.profile | lxc profile edit gui
❯ cat Documents/containers/lxd/ros.profile | lxc profile edit ros

Create the container

❯ lxc launch ubuntu:18.04 --profile default --profile gui --profile ros ros-melodic

Create alias to easily log into the container

❯ lxc alias add ubuntu 'exec @ARGS@ --user 1000 --group 1000 --env HOME=/home/ubuntu/ -- /bin/bash --login'

Add a shared disk so that you can edit files on the container or your host machine

❯ lxc config device add ros-melodic homedir disk source=/home/PATH-TO-FOLDER-YOU-WANT-SHARED/melodic-moveit path=/home/ubuntu/share

Run your container with the alias

❯ lxc ubuntu ros-melodic

Running ls you see pulse audio as well as the share folder that is shared with your hostmachine.

Now you can install the ROS programs that you need and run them.

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