Customized boot2docker replacement

For VSCode remote container development on Windows docker-desktop is now recommended. Docker-desktop requires you to install WSL2 which, for me, resulted in a boat load of problems with my existing Virtual Box VMs.

This is an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS minimal VirtualBox VM configured as a drop-in replacement for the default VM created by docker-toolbox on Windows. Vagrant is used to create a new default VM.

The customized VM can be configured as as required. The script bootstrap.sh installs Samba and Portainer.

Usage

This step removes any existing default. The script will also delete the virtual box VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter and it's associated DHCP server. This is needed to guarantee the the newly created VM will have the ip address 192.168.99.100.

In a git-bash terminal window:

./remove-vm.sh

Use Vagrant to create a new generic/ubuntu1604 default vbox vm

vagrant up
vagrant halt

Create a new ssh key pair using ssh-keygen

ssh-keygen -t rsa -f vscode_remote

Use the script ./docker-commission.sh to inject ssh keys and get docker-machine to commission the VM and install Docker:

./commission-vm.sh

Test the new docker VM by creating a simple container:

eval $(docker-machine env default)
docker run hello-world

Edit C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts and append the line 192.168.99.100 default:

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
#	127.0.0.1       localhost
#	::1             localhost

192.168.99.100  default

To confirm portainer is working, visit http://default:9000/#/dashboard.

You will need to change passwords on the VM users admin and vscode. The vagrant user can be deleted.

VSCODE Remote containers

The now discontinued docker-toolbox can be used successfully with Virtual Box but the version of docker installed by docker-toolbox is old. An alternative is to install docker-cli and docker-machine directly.

Chocolatey is currently hosting the following versions:

docker-toolbox 19.03.1 => docker 19.03.1, docker-machine 0.16.1
docker-cli 19.3.12, 
docker-machine 0.16.2

Chocolatey installs docker-cli and docker-machine to the folder:

C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\bin

docker.exe 20.10.5 is available from here. Dropping this in to *C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\bin* works fine. This is a stop gap until docker-cli 20.10.5 becomes available on Chocolatey.

Container development

A Samba share is available on the new default VM

\\default\workspaces

On the Windows host, drop VSCODE projects into this share. Projects dropped onto the share will, on the default VM be owned by the user vscode uid=1000, gui=1000

To make the Samba share map onto the container you will need to edit/add the following lines to the file ./devcontainer/devcontainer.json:

"workspaceFolder": "/workspace",
"workspaceMount": "source=/workspaces/${localWorkspaceFolderBasename},target=/workspace,type=bind,consistency=cached",

For uid/gui consistency, in your ./devcontainer/Dockerfile create the user vscode. For example:

FROM nikolaik/python-nodejs:python3.8-nodejs12

RUN useradd -ms /bin/bash vscode


USER vscode
ENV PATH="/home/vscode/.local/bin:${PATH}"

In VSCODE enter Ctrl + Shift + P and select Remote Containers: Rebuild and Reopen in Container. You should now be good to go.