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FEniCS Docker image size

0 votes

Hi,

I'm trying to get the FEniCS docker images working on a server that our lab group uses for simulations.

On my laptop - the FEniCS docker image takes up 3.5GB in /var/lib/docker. Whilst installing it on the server it uses up 20GB + at which point it runs out of disk space in /var/lib and crashes.

I'm very new to Docker so I'm sure this is mainly due to me not being familiar with it - is there a reason for the image sizes to differ so much ( my laptop is running Ubuntu and the server is running OpenSuse but I don't see why the image is 20GB + )? Has anyone else had this problem and is there a way to get a more lightweight image?

For both my laptop and server the command I used was:

docker run -ti quay.io/fenicsproject/stable:current

Thanks in advance!

asked Nov 3, 2016 by jb803 FEniCS Novice (200 points)

Maybe there are other Docker images on the server? You can see a list of all Docker images and the size of each image by running docker images.

commented Nov 7, 2016 by johannr FEniCS Expert (17,350 points)

It's a brand new installation of Docker - the only image installed is the Docker hello-world and that only takes 2kB.

If you run df -h whilst docker is trying to install the FEniCS image you can see the free space on /var/ drop fron 23GB to 0GB. When it hits 0GB Docker throws an error and all the disk space is freed up.

Does Docker download extra dependencies depending on the system? I don't understand why it's trying to use up so much space. Getting more space allocated to /var/ would not be treating the root cause of the problem I feel.

commented Nov 8, 2016 by jb803 FEniCS Novice (200 points)

Try installing some other Docker images on the server, for instance some of these. Does that give you the same problem?

commented Nov 8, 2016 by johannr FEniCS Expert (17,350 points)

I tried logstash. It downloads and runs.

There seems to be a discrepancy between the memory usage that you get from docker images (516MB) and the difference in available memory on /var/lib/ (5.1GB).

I'm very new to Docker but just to check -it only installs one copy of the image right? It doesn't do anything like trying to make a copy per user?

commented Nov 8, 2016 by jb803 FEniCS Novice (200 points)

Yes, only one copy.

commented Nov 8, 2016 by johannr FEniCS Expert (17,350 points)

This must be related to a bug in the OpenSUSE kernel or Docker build. Could you give us the output of docker info?

commented Nov 8, 2016 by jack_s_hale FEniCS Novice (180 points)
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