Containerizing ROS 2 without losing the hardware

contact@mulhamfetna.com (Mulham Fetna) — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Web developers containerize to isolate processes. Roboticists containerize and then spend the rest of the day punching holes back through the isolation — for the camera, the GPU, the display server and the network.

ROS 2 Jazzy is hard-locked to Ubuntu 24.04. That single fact is reason enough to containerize: without it, adopting a ROS distribution means adopting an operating system version, on every machine that will ever run the code.

But a ROS container is a strange artifact. A web service container wants isolation — that is the product. A robotics container needs a webcam, a GPU, a display server and multicast networking, all of which live outside it. You end up building a box and then carefully cutting four holes in it.

Here is every hole in this project’s compose file and what it is for.

Cold start to live tracking. Note hand_msgs being compiled separately inside two different containers — that duplication is deliberate and load-bearing.

flowchart TB
    subgraph HOST["🖥️ Host — Ubuntu / Kubuntu"]
        X11["X11 socket
/tmp/.X11-unix"]
        CAM["/dev/video0"]
        GPU["/dev/dri"]
        NET["host network
UDP multicast"]
    end
    subgraph C["Active containers · ROS_DOMAIN_ID=42"]
        HT["hand_tracker"]
        RV["ros_rviz"]
        TS["topic_sniffer"]
    end
    GZ["gazebo_sim
(commented out)"]:::parked
    classDef parked stroke-dasharray: 5 5,opacity:0.55
    CAM --> HT
    GPU --> HT
    GPU --> RV
    X11 --> HT
    X11 --> RV
    NET <--> HT
    NET <--> RV
    NET <--> TS

Hole 1 — the network wall has to come down
#

network_mode: "host"
ipc: host
pid: host

This is the one that breaks stacks silently, so it is worth understanding rather than copying.

Docker on Mulham Fetna

Containerizing ROS 2 without losing the hardware

Hole 1 — the network wall has to come down #

Hole 1 — the network wall has to come down
#