Docker-tutorial.md

Docker container with course dependencies

This file describes how to use a Docker container with Jupyter notebook and all dependencies required for the course.

The image is located at https://hub.docker.com/r/akashin/coursera-aml-nlp/.

Install Stable Docker Community Edition (CE)

• For Mac: https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/install/

• For Ubuntu: https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/ (see also other Linux distributives in the menu).

• For Windows (64bit Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise and Education): https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/install/

• For Windows (older versions): https://docs.docker.com/toolbox/toolbox_install_windows/

Get container image

To get the latest version of the container image run:

docker pull akashin/coursera-aml-nlp

It containes Ubuntu 16.04 Linux distirbutive and all dependencies that you need for our course. The downloaded image takes approximately 2.3GB.

Note: If you are getting an error "Got permission denied while trying to connect to the Docker daemon socket...", you need to add current user to the docker group:

sudo usermod -a -G docker $USER
sudo service docker restart

Then you need to logout and login to the system again (disconnect and connect to your AWS instance if you are setting up a docker on it).

Run container for the first time

Now you can start new container from this image with:

docker run -it -p 8080:8080 --name coursera-aml-nlp akashin/coursera-aml-nlp

This will start the Ubuntu instance and give you an access to its command line. You can type run_notebook to launch IPython notebook server.

You may find it useful to mount a directory from your local machine within the container using -v option.

For Linux and OSX, the following command should work:

docker run -it -p 8080:8080 --name coursera-aml-nlp -v $PWD:/root/coursera akashin/coursera-aml-nlp

This will use shell alias $PWD to mount current directory to the folder /root/coursera in the container. Alternatively, you can mount arbitrary directory by replacing $PWD with a custom path.

For Windows, there are some extra steps involved, and the launch command looks like

docker run -it -p 8080:8080 --name coursera-aml-nlp --user root -v /c/Users/$YOUR_USERNAME:/root/coursera akashin/coursera-aml-nlp

Where /c/Users/$YOUR_USERNAME is the path to your user's home folder.

If you're using Docker Toolbox on Windows, the command given above might not work because of the additional VirtualBox layer involved. Instead, we recommend you to follow the guidance in http://blog.shahinrostami.com/2017/11/docker-toolbox-windows-7-shared-volumes/.

Stop and resume container

To stop the container use:

docker stop coursera-aml-nlp

All the changes that were made within container will be saved.

To resume the stopped container use:

docker start -i coursera-aml-nlp

Other operations on the container

There are many other operations that you can perform on the container, to show all of them:

docker container

Some particularly useful would be showing a list of containers and removing container.

To show currently running and stopped containers with their status:

docker ps -a

To connect to a Bash shell in the already running container with name coursera-aml-nlp run:

docker exec -it coursera-aml-nlp bash

This will drop you into the standard Linux Bash shell that supports common commands like ls, wget or python3.

To remove the container and all data associated with it:

docker rm coursera-aml-nlp

Note, that this will remove all the internal data of the container (e.g. installed packages), but all the data written inside of your local mounted folder (-v option) will not be affected.

Install more packages

You can install more packages in the container if needed:

docker exec coursera-aml-nlp pip3 install PACKAGE_NAME

Change RAM limits of the container

Your container might have memory limits that are different from the actual limits of your physical machine, which might lead to a crash of your code due memory shortage.

• If you're running Windows or OSX, the default limit is 2GB, but you can change it by following this tutorials:

  • For Windows: https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/#advanced
  • For Mac OSX: https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/#advanced

• If you're running Linux, you're all set as the memory limits are the same as the physical memory of your machine.

Further reading

If you are interested to know more about Docker, check out this articles:

• Using Jupyter notebook from Docker: https://www.dataquest.io/blog/docker-data-science/
• General introduction to Docker: https://docker-curriculum.com/

Troubleshooting

Verify your Docker installation by running "Hello World" application

• Run docker pull hello-world. You should see a message that ends with “Status: Downloaded newer image for hello-world:latest”.
• Run docker run hello-world. You should see a message that starts with “Hello from Docker! This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.”

If you see any errors, follow relevant troubleshooting steps.

“Unauthorized: authentication required” when trying to pull Docker image

Run docker logout and try pulling again. If this doesn't help, make sure the system date is set correctly and try again. If this doesn't help, reinstall Docker and try again.

Can't open Jupyter notebook in the browser

If you try to open "http://localhost:8080" or "http://127.0.0.1:8080" in your browser, when run_notebook command is started, and you can't access your notebooks, here are some advices:

• If you're using Docker Toolbox on Windows, try accessing "http://192.168.99.100:8080" instead. If this doesn't work, follow the instructions on official Docker docs and on Stackoverflow.
• Make sure that you're running container with -p flag as described here and that the output of docker ps contains a message like this:

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                      COMMAND             CREATED                  STATUS              PORTS               NAMES
e5b7bcd85a1b        akashin/coursera-aml-nlp   "/bin/bash"         Less than a second ago   Up 2 seconds        8080/tcp            peaceful_lamarr

If the part about PORTS differs, remove the current container following instructions and start it again.

• Make sure that browser proxy settings don't interfere with accessing local web sites.

How do I load data into Docker container?

To access the data in the container, we recommend to use -v flag described here to mount a local directory from your computer into the container filesystem. For more details read Docker documentation.

Alternatively, you can download data using Jupyter "Upload" button or wget command in the Bash shell of the container.

Can't run run_notebook or starspace command

Make sure that you're executing it in the context of the Docker container as described here.

"Name is already in use by container" when trying to run the container

This means that the container with this name is already created. You can connect to this container or remove it by following instructions.

StarSpace/Jupyter notebook crashes in Docker

This usually happens due to low default 2GB memory limit on Windows and OSX. Follow this instructions to fix this.

"This computer doesn't have VT-X/AMD-v enabled", when trying to run the container

This usually happens if you're using Docker Toolbox that needs Virtual Box support - hence the need for the hardware virtualization that can be enabled in BIOS. Try to turn on the VT-X support in BIOS as described in Microsoft documentation or on GitHub.

Reporting the issue to the Coursera forum

Before reporting the issue to the Coursera forum, please, make sure that you've checked the troubleshooting steps. Only if they don't help, post all relevant error messages, throubleshooting results, and the following information to your post:

• Your operating system (e.g. Windows 7, Ubuntu Linux, OSX 10.13.3)
• Your docker version (e.g. Docker Toolbox, Docker for Windows, output of docker --version)
• Output of docker ps -a, docker info, docker version -f "{{ .Server.Os }}" (share thorough https://gist.github.com/ or https://pastebin.com/)
• Output of wget http://localhost:8080 (or wget http://192.168.99.100:8080 for Docker Toolbox), executed from within Docker container and outside of it

Credits

The template for this dockerfile was taken from https://github.com/ZEMUSHKA/coursera-aml-docker