Docker - Bitcoin Core GUI client

Run the Bitcoin Core GUI wallet on a Docker container, accesible via web browser and VNC. Built over the jlesage/docker-baseimage-gui image (debian-9 version).

This image is experimental and might have undesirable effects. Use it under your responsability!

Getting started

docker volume create --name=bitcoin-data
docker run -d --name=bitcoin-core-gui -p 5800:5800 -v bitcoin-data:/config davidlor/bitcoin-core-gui

Open your browser and go to localhost:5800. You should see the Bitcoin Core GUI application running!

On the first run, the Welcome window will open, where you will be prompted for the data location. You should set it to somewhere inside /config (by default, is set to /config/.bitcoin)

Volume (persistence)

The Bitcoin Core data directory is set to /config/.bitcoin by default. A volume is created for /config, but you might want to mount the /config/.bitcoin directory on other volume or a bind mount.

You can even mount sub-directories of the Bitcoin data directory. These are the most important::

• /config/.bitcoin/blocks for the blockchain
• /config/.bitcoin/wallet.dat for your wallet
• /config/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf for the client configuration
• /config/xdg/config/Bitcoin/Bitcoin-Qt.conf for the frontend (bitcoin-qt) configuration

The /config directory is used by the base image for persisting settings of the image tools and the application running. We set it as the HOME directory, so this results in bitcoin-qt setting the data directory to /config/.bitcoin by default.

Other settings

Please refer to the documentation of the base image for VNC/webui related settings, such as securing the connection and so on.

Changelog

• 0.3.1 - Revert "compile" in Dockerfile (since the compiled official releases already included ZeroMQ). The "compiled version" is kept on the feature/compile branch.
• 0.2.1 - Compile Bitcoin Core QT on Dockerfile, adding support for ZeroMQ. Add volume in Dockerfile.
• 0.1.1 - Add Bitcoin logo as container favicon
• 0.0.1 - Initial release

TODO

• Automate getting the latest Bitcoin Core version,
• Download Bitcoin Core from torrent (using aria2) for faster download speed - or other alternative repository?
• SquashFS + OverlayFS support for blockchain compression
• Multi-arch support
• Do not ask for data location on first client start (0.2.1): now we set the HOME directory to /config, so the default data dir is /config/.bitcoin. Is better to keep the Welcome window for the first time the container + volume start.