I have a docker container that uses a gstreamer plugin to capture the input of a camera. It runs fine with a Bastler camera but now I need to use an IDS uEye camera. To be able to use this camera I need to have the ueyeusbdrc service running. The IDS documentation says that to start it I can run sudo systemctl start ueyeusbdrc or sudo /etc/init.d/ueyeusbdrc start. The problem is that when the docker container runs, that service is not running and I get a Failed to initialize camera error, which is the same error I get if I run gst-launch-1.0 -v idsueyesrc ! videoconvert ! autovideosink and the ueyeusbdrc service is not running outside the container in my PC. So this tells me that the issue is that the ueyeusbdrc service is not running inside the container.
How can I run the ueyeusbdrc inside the docker container? I tried to run /etc/init.d/ueyeusbdrc start in the .sh script that launches the application (which is called using ENTRYPOINT ["<.sh file>"] in the Dockerfile), but it fails. Also if I try to use sudo, it tells me that the command doesn't exist. If I run systemctl it also tells me the command doesn't exist. BTW, I am running the docker with privileged: true (at least that's what is set in the docker-compose.yml file).
I am using Ubuntu 18.04.
Update: I mapped /run/ueyed and /var/run/ueyed to the container and that changed the error from Failed to initialize camera to Failed to initialize video capture. It may be that I can run the daemon in the host and there is a way to hook it to the container. Any suggestions on how to do that?
Finally got this working. I had to add a few options to the docker command (in my case to the docker-compose yml file). I based my solution on the settings found here: https://github.com/chalmers-revere/opendlv-device-camera-ueye
Adding these arguments to the docker command solved the issue: --ipc=host --pid=host -v /var/run:/var/run. With these options there is no need to run the service inside the container.
The other key part is to install the IDS software inside the docker container. This can be easily done by downloading, extracting and running the installer (the git repo mentioned above has an outdated version, but the most recent version can be found in the IDS web page).
Also, make sure the system service for the IDS uEye camera is running in the host (sudo systemctl start ueyeusbdrc).