docker-documentation/docs/images/docker-baseimage-selkies.md

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title: baseimage-selkies
---
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# Selkies Base Images from LinuxServer

The purpose of these images is to provide a full featured web native Linux desktop experience for any Linux application or desktop environment. These images replace our old base images at [KasmVNC](https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-baseimage-kasmvnc) for greatly increased performance, fidelity, and feature set. They ship with passwordless sudo to allow easy package installation, testing, and customization. By default they have no logic to mount out anything but the users home directory, meaning on image updates anything outside of `/config` will be lost.

- Support for using our base images in your own projects is provided on a Reasonable Endeavours basis, please see our [Support Policy](https://www.linuxserver.io/supportpolicy) for details.
- There is no `latest` tag for any of our base images, by design. We often make breaking changes between versions, and we don't publish release notes like we do for the downstream images.
- If you're intending to distribute an image using one of our bases, please read our [docs on container branding](https://docs.linuxserver.io/general/container-branding/) first.
- Images are supported for as long as the upstream release on which they are based, after which we will stop building new base images for that version.

These images contain the following services:

* [Selkies](https://github.com/selkies-project) - The core technology for interacting with a containerized desktop from a web browser.
* [pixelflux](https://github.com/linuxserver/pixelflux/) - The core video/image rendering pipeline.
* [pcmflux](https://github.com/linuxserver/pcmflux) - Lean low level web native opus audio encoder. 
* [NGINX](https://www.nginx.com/) - Used to serve Selkies with the appropriate paths and provide basic auth.
* [Docker](https://www.docker.com/) - Can be used for interacting with a mounted in Docker socket or if the container is run in privileged mode will start a [DinD](https://www.docker.com/blog/docker-can-now-run-within-docker/) setup.
* [PulseAudio](https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/) - Sound subsystem used to capture audio from the active desktop session and send it to the browser.

# Options

**Authentication for these containers is included as a convenience and to keep in sync with the previous KasmVNC containers they replace. We use bash to substitute in settings user/password and some strings might break that. In general this authentication mechanism should be used to keep the kids out not the internet**

If you are looking for a robust secure application gateway please check out [SWAG](https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-swag).

All application settings are passed via environment variables:

| Variable | Description |
| :----: | --- |
| CUSTOM_PORT | Internal port the container listens on for http if it needs to be swapped from the default 3000. |
| CUSTOM_HTTPS_PORT | Internal port the container listens on for https if it needs to be swapped from the default 3001. |
| CUSTOM_USER | HTTP Basic auth username, abc is default. |
| PASSWORD | HTTP Basic auth password, abc is default. If unset there will be no auth |
| SUBFOLDER | Subfolder for the application if running a subfolder reverse proxy, need both slashes IE `/subfolder/` |
| TITLE | The page title displayed on the web browser, default "Selkies - webrtc". |
| FM_HOME | This is the home directory (landing) for the file manager, default "/config". |
| START_DOCKER | If set to false a container with privilege will not automatically start the DinD Docker setup. |
| DISABLE_IPV6 | If set to true or any value this will disable IPv6 |
| LC_ALL | Set the Language for the container to run as IE `fr_FR.UTF-8` `ar_AE.UTF-8` |
| NO_DECOR | If set the application will run without window borders for use as a PWA. (Decor can be enabled and disabled with Ctrl+Shift+d) |
| NO_FULL | Do not autmatically fullscreen applications when using openbox. |
| DISABLE_ZINK | Do not set the Zink environment variables if a video card is detected (userspace applications will use CPU rendering) |
| WATERMARK_PNG | Full path inside the container to a watermark png IE `/usr/share/selkies/www/icon.png` |
| WATERMARK_LOCATION | Where to paint the image over the stream integer options below |
| MAX_RES | Pass a larger maximum resolution for the container default is 8k `7680x4320` |

* 1 - Top Left
* 2 - Top Right
* 3 - Bottom Left
* 4 - Bottom Right
* 5 - Centered
* 6 - Animated

## Language Support - Internationalization

The environment variable `LC_ALL` can be used to start this image in a different language than English simply pass for example to launch the Desktop session in French `LC_ALL=fr_FR.UTF-8`.

The web interface has an "IME Input Mode" in Settings which will allow non english characters to be used from a non en_US keyboard on the client. Once enabled it will perform the same as a local Linux installation set to your locale.

# Available Distros

All base images are built for x86_64 and aarch64 platforms.

| Distro | Current Tag |
| :----: | --- |
| Alpine | alpine322 |
| Arch | arch |
| Debian | debianbookworm |
| Enterprise Linux | el9 |
| Fedora | fedora42 |
| Kali | kali |
| Ubuntu | ubuntunoble |

### DRI3 GPU Acceleration

For accelerated apps or games, render devices can be mounted into the container and leveraged by applications using:

`--device /dev/dri:/dev/dri`

This feature only supports **Open Source** GPU drivers:

| Driver | Description |
| :----: | --- |
| Intel | i965 and i915 drivers for Intel iGPU chipsets |
| AMD | AMDGPU, Radeon, and ATI drivers for AMD dedicated or APU chipsets |
| NVIDIA | nouveau2 drivers only, closed source NVIDIA drivers lack DRI3 support |

The `DRINODE` environment variable can be used to point to a specific GPU.

DRI3 will work on aarch64 given the correct drivers are installed inside the container for your chipset.

### Nvidia GPU Support

**Note: Nvidia support is not available for Alpine-based images.**

Nvidia GPU support is available by leveraging Zink for OpenGL. When a compatible Nvidia GPU is passed through, it will also be **automatically utilized for hardware-accelerated video stream encoding** (using the `x264enc` full-frame profile), significantly reducing CPU load.

Enable Nvidia support with the following runtime flags:

| Flag | Description |
| :----: | --- |
| `--gpus all` | Passes all available host GPUs to the container. This can be filtered to specific GPUs. |
| `--runtime nvidia` | Specifies the Nvidia runtime, which provides the necessary drivers and tools from the host. |

# PRoot Apps

All images include [proot-apps](https://github.com/linuxserver/proot-apps) which allow portable applications to be installed to persistent storage in the user's `$HOME` directory. These applications and their settings will persist upgrades of the base container and can be mounted into different flavors of Selkies containers. IE if you are running an Alpine based container you will be able to use the same `/config` directory mounted into a Debian based container and retain the same applications and settings as long as they were installed with `proot-apps install`.

A list of linuxserver.io supported applications is located [HERE](https://github.com/linuxserver/proot-apps?tab=readme-ov-file#supported-apps).

# I like to read documentation

## Building images

### Application containers

Included in these base images is a simple [Openbox DE](http://openbox.org/) and the accompanying logic needed to launch a single application. Lets look at the bare minimum needed to create an application container starting with a Dockerfile:

```
FROM ghcr.io/linuxserver/baseimage-selkies:alpine322
RUN apk add --no-cache firefox
COPY /root /
```

And we can define the application to start using:

```
mkdir -p root/defaults
echo "firefox" > root/defaults/autostart
```

Resulting in a folder that looks like this:

```
├── Dockerfile
└── root
  └── defaults
    └── autostart
```

Now build and test:

```
docker build -t firefox .
docker run --rm -it -p 3001:3001 firefox bash
```

On https://localhost:3001 you should be presented with a Firefox web browser interface.

This similar setup can be used to embed any Linux Desktop application in a web accesible container.

**If building images it is important to note that many application will not work inside of Docker without `--security-opt seccomp=unconfined`, they may have launch flags to not use syscalls blocked by Docker like with chromium based applications and `--no-sandbox`. In general do not expect every application will simply work like a native Linux installation without some modifications**

#### In container application launching

Also included in the init logic is the ability to define application launchers. As the user has the ability to close the application or if they want to open multiple instances of it this can be useful. Here is an example of a menu definition file for Firefox:

```
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<openbox_menu xmlns="http://openbox.org/3.4/menu">
<menu id="root-menu" label="MENU">
<item label="xterm" icon="/usr/share/pixmaps/xterm-color_48x48.xpm"><action name="Execute"><command>/usr/bin/xterm</command></action></item>
<item label="FireFox" icon="/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/firefox.png"><action name="Execute"><command>/usr/bin/firefox</command></action></item>
</menu>
</openbox_menu>
```

Simply create this file and add it to your defaults folder as `menu.xml`:

```
├── Dockerfile
└── root
  └── defaults
    └── autostart
    └── menu.xml
```

This allows users to right click the desktop background to launch the application.


### Full Desktop environments

When building an application container we are leveraging the Openbox DE to handle window management, but it is also possible to completely replace the DE that is launched on container init using the `startwm.sh` script, located again in defaults:

```
├── Dockerfile
└── root
  └── defaults
    └── startwm.sh
```

If included in the build logic it will be launched in place of Openbox. Examples for this kind of configuration can be found in our [Webtop repository](https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-webtop)

## Docker in Docker (DinD)

These base images include an installation of Docker that can be used in two ways. The simple method is simply leveraging the Docker/Docker Compose cli bins to manage the host level Docker installation by mounting in `-v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock`.

The base images can also run an isolated in container DinD setup simply by passing `--privileged` to the container when launching. If for any reason the application needs privilege but Docker is not wanted the `-e START_DOCKER=false` can be set at runtime or in the Dockerfile.
In container Docker (DinD) will most likely use the fuse-overlayfs driver for storage which is not as fast as native overlay2. To increase perormance the `/var/lib/docker/` directory in the container can be mounted out to a Linux host and will use overlay2. Keep in mind Docker runs as root and the contents of this directory will not respect the PUID/PGID environment variables available on all LinuxServer.io containers.

## Nvidia GPU Support

**Nvidia is not compatible with Alpine based images**

Nvidia support is available by leveraging Zink for OpenGL support. This can be enabled with the following run flags:

| Variable | Description |
| :----: | --- |
| --gpus all | This can be filtered down but for most setups this will pass the one Nvidia GPU on the system |
| --runtime nvidia | Specify the Nvidia runtime which mounts drivers and tools in from the host |

The compose syntax is slightly different for this as you will need to set nvidia as the default runtime:

```
sudo nvidia-ctk runtime configure --runtime=docker --set-as-default
sudo service docker restart
```

And to assign the GPU in compose:

```
services:
  myimage:
    image: myname/myimage:mytag
    deploy:
      resources:
        reservations:
          devices:
            - driver: nvidia
              count: 1
              capabilities: [compute,video,graphics,utility]
```

# Development

This container can also be used as a rapid development environment for the Selkies Project. Simply clone the upstream repo and run the container as shown: 

```
git clone https://github.com/selkies-project/selkies.git
cd selkies
git checkout -f feature/websockets
docker run --rm -it \
  --shm-size=1gb \
  -e DEV_MODE=selkies-dashboard \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -v $(pwd):/config/src \
  -p 3001:3001 ghcr.io/linuxserver/baseimage-selkies:alpine322 bash
```

The application will be restarted on code changes to the src directory you mounted in and provide feedback for debugging.

The following line is only in this repo for loop testing:
- { date: "01.01.50:", desc: "I am the release message for this internal repo." }