Run AiiDA via a Docker image

The AiiDA team maintains a Docker image on Docker Hub. This image contains a fully pre-configured AiiDA environment which makes it particularly useful for learning and testing purposes.

Caution

All data stored in a container will persist only over the lifetime of that particular container unless you use volumes (see instructions below).

Start container

First, pull the image:

$ docker pull aiidateam/aiida-core:1.6.7

Then start the container with:

$ docker run -d --name aiida-container aiidateam/aiida-core:1.6.7

You can use the following command to block until all services have started up:

$ docker exec -t aiida-container wait-for-services

Check setup

The default profile is created under the aiida user, so to execute commands you must add the --user aiida option.

For example, to check the verdi status, execute:

$ docker exec -t --user aiida aiida-container /bin/bash -l -c 'verdi status'
✓ config dir:  /home/aiida/.aiida
✓ profile:     On profile default
✓ repository:  /home/aiida/.aiida/repository/default
✓ postgres:    Connected as aiida_qs_aiida_477d3dfc78a2042156110cb00ae3618f@localhost:5432
✓ rabbitmq:    Connected as amqp://127.0.0.1?heartbeat=600
✓ daemon:      Daemon is running as PID 1795 since 2020-05-20 02:54:00

Use container interactively

To “enter” the container and run commands directly in the shell, use:

$ docker exec -it --user aiida aiida-container /bin/bash

This will drop you into the shell within the container as the user “aiida”.

Persist data across different containers

If you stop the container and start it again, any data you created will persist.

$ docker stop aiida-container
$ docker start aiida-container

However, if you remove the container, all data will be removed as well.

$ docker stop aiida-container
$ docker rm aiida-container

The preferred way to persistently store data is to create a volume. To create a simple volume, run:

$ docker volume create my-data

Then make sure to mount that volume when running the aiida container:

$ docker run -d --name aiida-container --mount source=my-data,target=/tmp/my_data aiidateam/aiida-core:1.6.7

Starting the container with the above command, ensures that any data stored in the /tmp/my_data path within the container is stored in the my-data volume and therefore persists even if the container is removed.

What’s next?