bcoughlan / docker-ssh-bridge

Run a command against a remote Docker daemon by tunneling over SSH

docker-ssh-bridge

Run a command against a remote Docker daemon by tunneling over SSH.

Use cases

Since Docker 18.09, the Docker CLI has supported using a remote Docker Daemon over SSH by setting DOCKER_HOST=ssh://user@host. It is usually much faster to build the image remotely than to build it locally and copy it with docker save and SSH.

However, some tools (build plugins etc.) do not yet support the ssh protocol. This offers an alternative until it is widely supported.

Installation

wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bcoughlan/docker-ssh-bridge/master/docker-ssh-bridge -O/usr/local/bin/docker-ssh-bridge && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-ssh-bridge

Important: The SSH user must be a member of the docker group as described here: https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/linux-postinstall/#manage-docker-as-a-non-root-user

Usage

docker-ssh-bridge <ssh arguments e.g. <private key> user@host -- <command to execute>

e.g.

docker-ssh-bridge -i ~/.ssh/key.pem user@host -- docker build -f Dockerfile .

How it works

1. Create an SSH port forward between the remote docker.sock UNIX socket and a temporary file.
2. Set DOCKER_HOST to point at the temporary file.
3. Run the supplied command.
4. Cleans up.