dosbox

Your Universal DOS Game Console by Docker

Installation & run

Step 1. Install docker by following Docker official installation guide. Docker is cross-platform so you can run xserver on Mac OSX / Linux / Windows.
Step 2. Download the image, run

$ docker pull weichuntsai/xserver:1.0
$ docker pull weichuntsai/dosbox:1.0

$ docker run --name mydisplay -e VNC_PASSWORD=1234 -p 5901:5900 weichuntsai/xserver:1.0

For other scenarios of this step, please refer to xserver README.md

Step 5. Initialize the dosbox container with link to xserver container (assume you want to name the dosbox container as mydosgame and your DOS game folders are in the /oldgames of your host computer), please run

$ docker run --name mydosgame -dt -v /oldgames:/home --link mydisplay:xserver --volumes-from mydisplay weichuntsai/dosbox:1.0

Step 6. Setup authentication cookie in the container mydosgame and run the command dosbox

$ docker exec -it mydosgame bash
$ chmod 755 /setup-xclient.sh; /setup-xclient.sh xserver; source ${HOME}/.bashrc
$ dosbox

Step 7. Open your VNC viewer in the host computer (assume you initialize xserver like Step 4), connect to localhost:5901 and type in the password 1234, then you can see your dosbox console window inside the VNC viewer window like the following figure:
Step 8. Type in dir in the dosbox console window, and you would see your game folders. Then you just use cd ${game_folder} to enter into the folder and find the right executable you have to run (I assume you know what to run).