I can’t seem to wrap my head around (Docker) containers and especially their maintenance.
As I understand it, containers contain a stripped-down OS that shares some resources with the host?
Or is it more like a closed-off part of the file system?

Anyway, when I have several containers running on a host system,
Do I need to keep them all updated separately? If so, how?
Or is it enough to update the host system, and not worry about the containers?

  • thirteene@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    1 day ago

    It’s built on the shipping container parallel. In order to transport objects you obfuscate anything not required for shipping a container.

    • What’s inside the container doesn’t matter. The container has everything it needs to run because the ship/host is responsible for the overhead.
    • containers move. Containers are setup to run by themselves, so you can move it from one ship to another. This means you can use your container doesn’t care if it’s in the cloud or a shipping vessel
    • As soon as you open a container your stuff is there. It’s very easy to onboard.
    • Most importantly though, your shipping container isn’t a full boat by itself. It lives in a sandbox and only borrows the resources it needs like the hosts CPU or the boats ability to float. This makes it easier to manage and stack because it’s more flexible
    • fedorato@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      Love the container analogy - immediately made so much sense to me! Also clarifies some misunderstandings I had.

      I was mucking about with docker for a Plex server over the weekend and couldn’t figure out what exactly docker was doing. All I knew was that it’d make plex ‘sandboxed’, but I then realised it also had access to stuff outside the container.

      • bobs_monkey@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        This is their logo:

        The whole container on a ship idea is their entire premise. The ship (docker) is a unified application/os layer to the host, in that containers can work plug-n-play with the docker base layer.

      • thirteene@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        On a very specific note, I don’t run my Plex server in a container. I have a docker compose setup with 20+ apps, but Plex is on the bare metal OS because it’s kinda finicky and doesn’t like nas. You also need to setup the Plex API to claim the server as the container name changes. This is my stock Plex config if it helps

        plex:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest
    container_name: plex
    network_mode: host
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/GMT
      - VERSION=docker
      - PLEX_CLAIM= #optional
    volumes:
      - /home/null/docker/plex/:/config
      - /x:/x
      - /y:/y
      - /z:/z
    restart: unless-stopped