Installation with Docker#

Prerequisites#

Please make sure you have installed docker in the officially recommended way. Otherwise, please refer to the official guide.

Please install NVIDIA Container Toolkit following the official guide, or run the following commands:

curl -fsSL https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/gpgkey | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg \
&& curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/stable/deb/nvidia-container-toolkit.list | \
    sed 's#deb https://#deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg] https://#g' | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.list
sed -i -e '/experimental/ s/^#//g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y nvidia-container-toolkit
sudo nvidia-ctk runtime configure --runtime=docker
sudo systemctl restart docker

Please create and add the docker user information to .env file. To use the same user information as the host machine, run in project root:

printf "DOCKER_UID=$(id -u $USER)\nDOCKER_GID=$(id -g $USER)\nDOCKER_USER=$USER\n" > .env

Build the docker image#

Build the docker image and attach to the container bash:

docker compose up --build -d && docker exec -it metasim bash

This will automatically build docker image roboverse-metasim.

It may take ~30mins when the network speed is ~20MB/s. The docker image size would be ~32GB.

Run the docker container in VSCode/Cursor#

Install the Dev Containers extension in VSCode/Cursor.

Then reopen the window, click the Reopen in Container option in the bottom left corner.

Setup GUI#

Before you run any command, you need to setup the GUI. On the host machine, run:

xhost +local:docker

In container, launch a xclock application to test the GUI:

xclock

If a clock successfully shown on the host machine, the GUI is working.

Tips#

Run docker without sudo#

You may want to run docker without sudo. Run:

sudo groupadd docker
sudo gpasswd -a $USER docker

After re-login, you should be able to run docker without sudo:

docker run hello-world

Setup proxy for docker#

Set up local Clash proxy and make sure it works on local IP address. For example, you need enable “Allow LAN” if you are using Clash.

Turn on clash to allow LAN:

# vim ~/Clash/config.yaml
allow-lan: true

Then test in your terminal

export HOST_IP=192.168.61.221
export all_proxy=socks5://${HOST_IP}:7890
export all_proxy=socks5://${HOST_IP}:7890
export https_proxy=http://${HOST_IP}:7890
export http_proxy=http://${HOST_IP}:7890
export no_proxy=localhost,${HOST_IP}/8,::1
export ftp_proxy=http://${HOST_IP}:7890/

# check env variables are set
env | grep proxy

# test connection
curl -I https://www.google.com

Set up docker proxy.

# vim ~/.docker/config.json
"proxies": {
    "default": {
        "httpProxy": "http://192.168.1.55:7890",
        "httpsProxy": "http://192.168.1.55:7890",
        "allProxy": "socks5://192.168.1.55:7890",
        "noProxy": "192.168.1.55/8"
    }
}

Note

Do NOT set IP address to 127.0.0.1. Instead, change it to your local ipv4 address.

Setup proxy mirros used when docker pull, etc

# sudo vim /etc/docker/daemon.json
{
    ...
    "registry-mirrors": [
        "https://mirror.ccs.tencentyun.com",
        "https://05f073ad3c0010ea0f4bc00b7105ec20.mirror.swr.myhuaweicloud.com",
        "https://registry.docker-cn.com",
        "http://hub-mirror.c.163.com",
        "http://f1361db2.m.daocloud.io"
    ]
}

Restart docker [and then build again]

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart docker

Add PROXY to .env file.

DOCKER_USER=...
DOCKER_UID=...
DOCKER_GID=...
PROXY=http://192.168.1.55:7890

Uncomment the lines in dockerfile which changes ubuntu apt sources to aliyun if you encounter apt install failures.

# Change apt source if you encouter connection issues
RUN sed -i s@/archive.ubuntu.com/@/mirrors.aliyun.com/@g /etc/apt/sources.list && \
    sed -i s@/security.ubuntu.com/@/mirrors.aliyun.com/@g /etc/apt/sources.list

Be patient. Sometimes you need run docker compose build multiple times.