A docker-compose configuration file to run psiturk with MySQL support.
The docker-compose file runs a standard MySQL container and an ad-hoc psiturk container, links them up, and psiturk should magically talk to the MySQL server.
DISCLAIMER: this is very experimental, it can be improved (see known issues below), but for the moment it works for me (at least testing it). Feel free to play with it (and maybe submit PRs so we all benefit from it? ;) )
Install docker and docker-compose. Then run
docker-compose up -d
This should download the relevant images, build the psiturk image, run the containers,
and link them. By default they are launched in "daemon" mode (-d).
Then, you need to log in into the psiturk container to use the psiturk shell:
docker attach psiturkdocker_psiturk_1
or change psiturkdocker_psiturk_1 with whatever name shows up for the psiturk container.
After that command, you should be logged into the container. To test that everything works,
try
cd psiturk-example
psiturk
this should launch the psiturk shell. Then cross your fingers and run
server on
debug -p
if your server is visible in the network, copying and pasting the URL on the browser should let you try the experiment.
Note: to detach from the container do not type exit; this will kill the container (although it might restart automatically, it's not nice). Instead, press the sequence ctrl+p ctrl+q to detach.
By default docker-compose.yml maps ./exp in the host to /psiturk in the psiturk container.
Thus, you can put any experiment directory into ./exp, then cd into that within the container, and run
the psiturk shell.
The global psiturk configuration file is in ./exp/.psiturkconfig, and the env variable is set to point there
inside the container.
Also, the mysql database is saved under ./data/db, and the user and password can be changed
by changing the environment variables in docker-compose.yml (remember to change the database_url
in the config.txt of the example if you do change it).
If you know how to fix any of these, or find new issues, please let me know
- everything is run as root into the psiturk container; this is because exposing a host folder with another user causes permission problems
- if you run
server logfrom the psiturk shell, it crashes miserably because psiturk wants xterm installed, but we're not installing it. If you do want to see the log, you can always log in the container andcatortailtheserver.logfile.