windowsdockerubunturosgazebo-simu

How to have multiple GUI displays from multiple bashes of a Linux Docker Container using Vcxsrv in Windows host?


I currently have an Ubuntu docker container to run GUI applications called Gazebo and ROS. I am using Vcxsrv to run the GUIs on my windows host os and am able to display a GUI. However the problem is that I can only display one GUI from one bash of my running docker container at a time as I am able run my first GUI program, Gazebo, in the first docker container bash. But after I run a new bash with "docker exec -it bash" and then run another GUI program, like one called Rviz, I get the error here:

root@:/# rviz
qt.qpa.xcb: could not connect to display [ip here].1:0.0
qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc, xcb.

Aborted

Therefore, I tried to run my "config.xlaunch" file again and then the rviz command but the same error occurred. After, I looked at the small vcxsrv icons in the right of my taskbar and one of them said "DESKTOP-Q:0.0 - 7 clients" which corresponded to my first GUI application running. However, the second icon showed "DESKTOP-Q:1.0 - 0 clients" which should run my second GUI application. Therefore I was wondering what I would need to do for multiple GUI applications to run in multiple docker bashes of the same running container? Thank you.


Solution

  • Turns out I had to change around the DISPLAY environment variable in the Docker container from virtual ethernet to wireless adapter and visa versa. And I did this after I launched one of the GUI programs. After you are able to launch the second GUI program you do not have to switch environment variables anymore. This solution does not seem the best so therefore please feel free to post a better solution.