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BakaKuna

Member

Registered: 2013-05-29

Posts: 3

Emacs in docker can not share X screen

I like the idea of running Emacs in isolation. Following this idea by Jazzie Frazelle about running desktop apps in containers, I have set up a very basic Dockerfile to install emacs in the i3iggs basecontainer that provides a recent Arch install with yaourt pre-installed.

FROM l3iggs/archlinux-aur

RUN yaourt -S emacs --noconfirm

CMD ["/bin/bash"]

When I run this with my X shared with docker:

$ docker build -t emacs_in_docker .
$ docker run --rm -u joris  -e  DISPLAY=unix$DISPLAY -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix emacs_in_docker

Emasc throws me the following error:

** (emacs:1): WARNING **: Couldn't connect to accessibility bus: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-N9Dg5cedFT: Connection refused
X protocol error: BadAccess (attempt to access private resource denied) on protocol request 130
When compiled with GTK, Emacs cannot recover from X disconnects.
This is a GTK bug: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715
For details, see etc/PROBLEMS.
X protocol error: BadShmSeg (invalid shared segment parameter) on protocol request 130
When compiled with GTK, Emacs cannot recover from X disconnects.
This is a GTK bug: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715
For details, see etc/PROBLEMS.
Fatal error 6: Aborted

I'm not sure that the warning about the accesibility bus has got anything to do with this, but the X protocol error looks bad. At first I thought into a problem with X, docker, arch, ... in general, but this is a problem for Emacs specifically. I installed Firefox in the same container and this will run just fine. To be sure I also installed Emacs and Firefox in an Ubuntu container and there as well, I can run Firefox but not Emacs.

I have found a related bug for cygwin, but I do not know how I could make any of the proposed work-arounds work in Docker.

Does anyone have any help or at least an idea as to where to start debugging this?