Docker Configuration for Shiny-Server and RStudio Server on CentOS7

The Docker Hub has a similar instance of Shiny-Server called Rocker, which runs on a Debian instance. However, many organizations prefer to run production servers on CentOS. This work uses CentOS 7. There is also a similar container based on CentOS 6.7, which was the inspiration for this container.

This configuration includes:

R
RStudio Server
Shiny-Server

Additional R Packages include:

shiny, rmarkdown, devtools, RJDBC, dplyr, plotly, RPostgreSQL, lubridate, DT, forecast, ggplot2, DBI, magittr, stringr, shinyjs, and RPostgres

Setup

Install Docker on your system.
Download or clone this repository.

Build the Dockerfile

docker build /YOUR_PATH_TO/forecastr -t forecastR:1

View Your Docker Images

docker images

Run your Shiny-Server Docker image.

docker run -p 3838:3838 -p 8787:8787 -d forecastr:1

Shiny-Server is running at localhost:3838
RStudio Server is running at localhost:8787

Open RStudio in browser

localhost:8787

The username and password for RStudio Server is rstudio.

Setup the RStudio environment

setwd("/home/rstudio/R")

library(shiny)

Run the forecastR model

runApp(port = 3894, launch.browser = TRUE)

Modify the Docker Container

This is a bare-bones container, so there is a good chance you will want to do some additional configuration. The command below will start your Docker instance and dump you into the root shell.

docker run -p 3838:3838 -p 8787:8787 -it shiny-server /bin/bash

Arg -i tells docker to attach stdin to the container.
Arg -t tells docker to give us a pseudo-terminal.
Arg /bin/bash will run a terminal process in your container.

Install Additional Stuff

Maybe you need a PostgreSQL instance?

yum install postgresql-devel -y

Exit the Container

exit

Find the Container ID

docker ps -a

Use Docker Commit to Save

The syntax is:

docker commit [CONTAINER ID] [REPOSITORY:TAG]

It should look something like this:

docker commit b59185b5ba4b docker-shiny:shiny-server-v2

See New Container

docker images

camdey/forecastR