This is a simple example of how to set up a containerised RStudio server, running behind an Nginx reverse proxy, and being served via HTTPS using free Let’s Encrypt certificates. The Nginx containers are the work of https://github.com/gilyes/docker-nginx-letsencrypt-sample, and more examples of how to add your own websites can be found there.

While this container setup can be run anywhere, this guide is primarily for users who wish to set up an RStudio server on Pawsey's cloud service, Nimbus.

To begin you'll need the following installed on your Nimbus VM:

• docker (>= 1.10)
• docker-compose (>= 1.8.1)

There are several ways to install Docker, and I recommend you use the official version from Docker, as the version available through most package managers (e.g. yum, apt, etc.) is outdated. Detailed instructions can be found here.

You'll also need a domain (or subdomain) name for your Nimbus VM; you can create a free one using something like No-IP.

More detail about each part is given below, but for those who just want to get up and running, here's what you need to do:

• Clone this repository
• Edit docker-compose.yml
  • Change VIRTUAL_HOST and LETSENCRYPT_HOST to your domain name
  • Change USER and PASSWORD to your desired RStudio username and password
  • Change LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL to your preferred email address (it will be associated with the generated certificates)
  • If you want to mount any directories into your RStudio container you need to change the VOLUMES TO BE MOUNTED line in the rstudio section. An example is given in the docker-compose.yml file, where the directory rstudio_data is mounted to /home/rstudio/data in the cointainer
• Edit Dockerfile to install desired R pacakges, change RStudio version, install other packages, etc.
• Run docker-compose up -d to start the containers

You should now have a working RStudio server that you can access via a web browser at https://mydomain.com.

There are 4 containers that will be used:

• Nginx reverse proxy container
• Nginx configuration container
• Let's Encrypt certificate container
• RStudio container

These 4 containers work together to setup the HTTPS certificates, create and configure an Nginx server, and launch an RStudio server. While it's possible to manually configure and start each container, it's much easier to use docker-compose to handle all of this for us. At the end of this, all we'll need to do is run

docker-compose up -d

and have a fully functional, containerised RStudio server running behind Nginx with HTTPS certificates.

Note that the -d flag means our containers will run in detached mode (in the background). If you find your containers aren't working or you can't access RStudio, run docker-compose without the -d flag to see debug output.

We'd like to add some extra security to our RStudio server, as it's outside of Pawsey firewalls and visible to the entire internet. We could try and configure RStudio's web server, but it's easier (and more secure) to use an existing web server...in our case, Nginx.

We'll be using Nginx as a reverse proxy, meaning that all web traffic that would normally go to our RStudio server, will instead be handled by Nginx. RStudio server normally runs on port 8787, and instead of opening up that port to the internet (and possibly exposing a vulnerability), we can simply open a single port for Nginx, and let Nginx route traffic to our internal services (like RStudio).

In this example, we'll be using Nginx's Docker image, and this will be the only externally visible container. The nginx block in docker-compose.yml defines how this container will be configured:

services:
  nginx:
    restart: always
    image: nginx
    container_name: nginx
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    volumes:
      - "/etc/nginx/conf.d"
      - "/etc/nginx/vhost.d"
      - "/usr/share/nginx/html"
      - "./volumes/proxy/certs:/etc/nginx/certs:ro"

We're exposing two ports, 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS), and we are also mounting several volumes into the container:

• Configuration folder: another container will generate the Nginx config, which will define how our Nginx reverse proxy server works
• Nginx root folder: used by the Let's Encrypt container as part of the certification process
• Certificate folder: A Let's Encrypt container will produce our HTTPS certifcates and store them here

This container handles setting up the configuration file for our main Nginx container. We're using the jwilder/docker-gen image for this. TThe relevant section in docker-compose.yml is:

nginx-gen:
    restart: always
    image: jwilder/docker-gen
    container_name: nginx-gen
    volumes:
      - "/var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro"
      - "./volumes/proxy/templates/nginx.tmpl:/etc/docker-gen/templates/nginx.tmpl:ro"
    volumes_from:
      - nginx
    entrypoint: /usr/local/bin/docker-gen -notify-sighup nginx -watch -wait 5s:30s /etc/docker-gen/templates/nginx.tmpl /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

The Nginx template file (ngninx.tmpl) is mounted into this container, to it can be read (note the read-only flag). We also mount /var/run/docker.sock into the container. This allows the container to use Docker to inspect other containers.

This container handles generating the TLS certificates we're going to use with our RStudio server. We're using the jrcs/letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion image.

letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion:
    restart: always
    image: jrcs/letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion
    container_name: letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion
    volumes_from:
      - nginx
    volumes:
      - "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro"
      - "./volumes/proxy/certs:/etc/nginx/certs:rw"
    environment:
      - NGINX_DOCKER_GEN_CONTAINER=nginx-gen

Just like the Nginx configuration container, we again mount in the Docker socket to give the container access to Docker. We also mount in a certs directory that will hold the generated certificates. Both of these are shared with the main Nginx container.

Also, this container will handle auto-renewing the certificates

This container sets up our RStudio server. In this case, we're using the latest version of the tidyverse image (at the time of writing this means R version 3.5), but you can change this to a preferred version.

This section of docker-compose.yml will require some modification by the user:

rstudio:
    restart: always
    image: tidyverse:latest
    container_name: rstudio
    volumes:
      - <VOLUMES TO BE MOUNTED>
      - "$HOME/rstudio_data:/home/rstudio/data"
    expose:
      - "8787"
    environment:
      - VIRTUAL_HOST=<YOUR HOSTNAME>
      - VIRTUAL_NETWORK=nginx-proxy
      - VIRTUAL_PORT=80
      - USER=<RSTUDIO USERNAME>
      - PASSWORD=<RSTUDIO PASSWORD>
      - LETSENCRYPT_HOST=<YOUR HOSTNAME>
      - LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=<YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS>

The key options to change include

• VIRTUAL_HOST and LETSENCRYPT_HOST to your domain name
• USER and PASSWORD to your desired RStudio username and password
• LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL to your preferred email address (it will be associated with the generated certificates)
• Additional volumes you want to mount into the container

In this example we've created a directory on the host in $HOME/rstudio_data which is then mounted into the container at /home/rstudio/data.

Note that this RStudio container is stock; it includes no extra R packages. If you want to install extra R packages, you should create your own, custom RStudio container, install the packages there, and then change the image option in the rstudio section of docker-compose.yml