Enabling rootless Linux Containers in multi-user environments: the udocker tool

TL;DR

The paper introduces udocker, a tool that allows users to run Linux containers in user mode without root privileges, enabling flexible deployment of scientific applications in multi-user environments.

Contribution

It presents the design and implementation of udocker, a novel tool for rootless container execution, and demonstrates its applicability to diverse scientific computing scenarios.

Findings

udocker enables rootless container execution in multi-user environments.

The tool supports a range of scientific applications, including MPI and GPU-based codes.

Practical use cases show effective deployment of containers without requiring root privileges.

Abstract

Containers are increasingly used as means to distribute and run Linux services and applications. In this paper we describe the architectural design and implementation of udocker, a tool which enables the user to execute Linux containers in user mode. We also present a few practical applications, using a range of scientific codes characterized by different requirements: from single core execution to MPI parallel execution and execution on GPGPUs.