How do I configure my docker container to run in the browser?

Question

How do I correctly configure and build my docker container/image to run on the web browser?

I have a meteor webapp, and using one of the existing base images: jshimko/meteor-launchpad, that comes recommended by the official Meteor Guide on Depolyment & Monitoring, tutorial found at meteor-launchpad-github. I have been able to build an image based on my web app, but its never assigned a port, therefore I am unable to run it in the browser.

Added the Dockerfile to the root of my web app, and added the following contents

FROM debian:jessie

To build the image, I then run the below in the terminal

docker build -t sirbt/myapp .

Which yeilded:

Sending build context to Docker daemon  2.331MB
Step 1/1 : FROM debian:jessie
 ---> b6e9658de383
Successfully built b6e9658de383
Successfully tagged sirbt/myapp:latest

I then commence to saving the following contents in the .dockerignore file that I also save in the app directory root

.git
.meteor/local
node_modules

and then run the code below to run myapp in the container

docker run -d \
  -e ROOT_URL=http://example.com \
  -e MONGO_URL=mongodb://url \
  -e MONGO_OPLOG_URL=mongodb://oplog_url \
  -e MAIL_URL=smtp://mail_url.com \
  -p 70:3000 \
  sirbt/myapp

the code then yeilds:

4e616999e521014fcb19d33869b45c79d93d6774d2d02e2f413343b72294f88b

I follow this by command:

docker ps

Which yeild:

CONTAINER ID  IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS   NAMES

However

docker ps -a yeilds:

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                 CREATED             STATUS PORTS                                      NAMES
4e616999e521        sirbt/myapp         "bash"                   3 minutes ago       Exited (0) 2 minutes ago                           compassionate_greider

As you can tell, no port is assigned to the container to enable me to run it on the browser. The tutorial suggest that at this point I should be able to run it on the localhost on port 80 (in my case port 70). What am I missing here? How can I configure my docker container so that is assigned a port, enabling me to run it in the browser?

Find below the contents of my docker-compose.yml

# docker-compose.yml

app:
  image: yourname/app
  ports:
    - "70:3000"
  links:
    - mongo
  environment:
    - ROOT_URL=http://example.com
    - MONGO_URL=mongodb://mongo:27017/meteor

mongo:
  image: mongo:latest
  command: mongod --storageEngine=wiredTiger

Update to reflect why I am not using FROM jshimko/meteor-launchpad:latest in my dockerfile

When I update my Dockerfile with FROM jshimko/meteor-launchpad:latest as suggested in the tutorial. I get the following error message:

`Get:6 http://deb.debian.org jessie/main amd64 Packages [9098 kB]
Fetched 10.1 MB in 8s (1154 kB/s)
W: Failed to fetch http://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/jessie-updates/InRelease  Unable to find expected entry 'main/binary-amd64/Packages' in Release file (Wrong sources.list entry or malformed file)

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
The command '/bin/sh -c cd $APP_SOURCE_DIR &&   $BUILD_SCRIPTS_DIR/install-deps.sh &&   $BUILD_SCRIPTS_DIR/install-node.sh &&   $BUILD_SCRIPTS_DIR/install-phantom.sh &&   $BUILD_SCRIPTS_DIR/install-graphicsmagick.sh &&   $BUILD_SCRIPTS_DIR/install-mongo.sh &&   $BUILD_SCRIPTS_DIR/install-meteor.sh &&   $BUILD_SCRIPTS_DIR/build-meteor.sh &&   $BUILD_SCRIPTS_DIR/post-build-cleanup.sh' returned a non-zero code: 100`

Answer 1

Make sure to read the meteor-launchpad tutorial closely, as it looks like you've missed a couple points.

I notice you said your Dockerfile is:

FROM debian:jessie

That's your main problem. It should be:

FROM jshimko/meteor-launchpad:latest

(or FROM jshimko/meteor-launchpad:some-specific-version).

By changing the FROM, you've made the rest of the tutorial irrelevant. You're now just building and running a basic Debian container that doesn't do anything.

Unfortunately, it looks like the meteor-launchpad image is broken. It hasn't been updated in about 2 years, and it's built on an old version of Debian whose sources have been archived - that is the cause of your build error (see https://github.com/debuerreotype/docker-debian-artifacts/issues/66).

If you really want to use meteor-launchpad, I'd recommend cloning its repo and building the image yourself.

git clone https://github.com/jshimko/meteor-launchpad.git
cd meteor-launchpad
docker build -t jshimko/meteor-launchpad:latest .

After doing that, you can probably follow the tutorial; however, you might need to change FROM debian:jessie in the meteor-launchpad Dockerfile to use a more recent Debian version. This is not a production-worthy solution, but I'm recommending it since it sounds like you're just trying to get a learning project up and running.

I'd recommend reading up on Docker concepts, since the meteor-launchpad docs seem to assume you're pretty familiar with them. You could start with Docker's own tutorial docs.

---

Also, your docker-compose.yml file is not being used. Docker Compose is an alternative to issuing docker run commands directly; to use it, run the command docker-compose up [-d] from the directory where the YML file is located. Using just the docker run command you posted will start a container from the image you built, but it won't start a mongo container. You would have to start that separately.