RandomFieldsDocker

Docker container for R package RandomFields

Overview

RandomFields was an R package on CRAN maintained by Martin Schlather which allows the estimation, prediction and simulation of random fields. The R extension 'RandomFieldsUtils' packages auxiliary algebraic routines and is used in many functions in RandomFields.

Due to changes in CRAN requirements there has been a cascade of adjustments to RandomFields and RandomFieldsUtils over the last years, which have added bugs on some operating systems. This repository contains files for building a docker container in which RandomFields can be used. For updates on RandomFields, please refer to Martin Schlather's website, the maintainer of RandomFields.

Prerequisites

• Docker

For the RandomFields GUI RFgui, you need to enable X11 forwarding, as the GUI is served as a Tcl/Tk window. This adds further preparatory steps, which are detailed below.

Use

The docker container can be built as usual through

docker build -t --platform linux/amd64 randomfieldsdocker .

Afterwards, the container is launched

docker run -it -u docker --name="RandomFieldsDocker" --platform linux/amd64 randomfieldsdocker

Plots

If you're interested in plots, the easiest solution is to use the httpgd package, which is part of the docker image and provides plots through a http server. In this case, the container is launched through

docker run -it -u docker --name="RandomFieldsDocker" -p 8000:8000 --platform linux/amd64 randomfieldsdocker

and the httpgd server is initialized in R through

httpgd::hgd(host = "0.0.0.0", port = 8000)

Now the plot server should be available to the host at localhost:8000 and can be tested through plot(RMexp()), for instance.

RandomFields GUI

RandomFields has a built-in GUI. Unfortunately, its compatibility with modern operating systems is quite unstable and the corresponding functions have been deprecated. If you rely on the GUI and run into errors, please contact the maintainer of RandomFields. To build the docker container with tcl/tk dependencies, you need to specify the -build-arg GUI=yes to your build command.

The GUI builds on Tcl/Tk and to use it as part of a container you need to forward the container's X11 output. Since this involves interaction with the host, the set-up instructions for this are platform-dependent:

• Windows: A guide how to do this on windows can be found here.
• macOS: Instructions for macOS can be found here.
• Linux: Instructions depend on the distribution, window manager, etc.

In addition to the docker run arguments in the respective documents, you also need to mount the X11 socket. On Unix-like operating systems, this is achieved through the flag -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp.X11-unix:ro. A full run instruction on macOS might look like this:

docker run -it -e DISPLAY=$ip:0 -u docker -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp.X11-unix:ro --platform linux/amd64 randomfieldsdocker

Credits

This docker image builds on

• the R package sp
• Rocker
• the guide X11 forwarding on macOS and docker
• https://stackoverflow.com/q/25281992/20461152