Background
Some days ago, I got a call from someone asking for a solution. Due to global pandemic they were unable to hand over a laptop to new employee. They wanted the new employee to access a certain websites but did not wish to share the passwords.
Their idea : provide access to already-logged-in browser to the new person, so they would have access to the sites, but do not need the passwords.
They had considered AWS workspaces - but it is costly. (Finally they got some "Free for a couple of months" deal, and used as their final solution)
I suggested "Chrome in Docker". The conversation ended, but it intrigued me and wanted to try it out myself.
I started with this but it did not work as-is for me. Partially because (I think) the original repo assumes linux host, and I am on macOS. So I had to make some changes.
Summary of my changes
- I included the
chrome.json
in the repo. See details about this file in the Dockerfile comments. - I had to replace
libpango
withlibpangox
since the original repo is couple years old. - Removed
talk-plugin
cause I don't need it. - Created
run.sh
- because thedocker
command becomes too long, and changing a param becomes PITA - Removed
--device
params because it does not apply to macOS (I think) - Finally, I needed XServer, which comes with linux but not macOS. Hence
brew cask install xquartz
Bit of Troubleshooting
Where is the fun if things work in the first attempt ?
I kept getting Unable to Open XDisplay
error.
To fix the error, I had to set the ip
as per this
I created setxhost.sh
to simplify this. (Originally it was part of run.sh
)
You can see all my changes in my git repo which contains all my
modification.
The README has detailed instructions to try this on your mac.
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