ISS with docker-machine on Linux

[Jordahl__Steve]

I have ISS up and running against a local docker instance, and things appear to work fine.  Instead of using the local instance, I'd prefer to use a remote docker instance running on a node on the same LAN.  I'm able to configure docker-machine to control the remote instance, but it appears that ISS (IoT Connection component) is looking for something that it's not finding.  With docker-machine connected and working, I go into ISS and then to Project -> Manage installed development platforms and get the following error from the Platform support manager (dialog title):

Docker has been installed, but is not running or is not configured correctly.

From what I've been able to scrounge online, it appears that docker-machine is supported (at least to some degree) on the Windows version of ISS, so I'm curious if I'm missing something or if there's a way to configure ISS to properly use docker-machine control of a remote system?

Any assistance is appreciated.

[Chris_P_Intel]

Hi Steve,

My apologies for the late reply.  

I believe that what you are trying to do is configure your local docker daemon to use an alternate socket to connect to a remote so that the build commands that ISS issues will get routed to some remote container, correct?

If you got that working, that's very impressive. However, I'm not sure you'll be able to get much farther, or at least, you may have to work around the OS Manager. 

One of the common problems for users, especially on Windows, is not having docker installed or not having it configured correctly. For this reason, ISS does a fair bit of checking the local system before even offering the option to use Docker to build, and it, unfortunately, assumes that all-things-docker are local. This is what you are running against.  

I've opened a ticket for us to explore this. It may be that we are overly cautious and some checks could be loosened and enable what you want. But it might entail other trade-offs, so I cannot make promises. 

Hope this helps,

Chris

[Jordahl__Steve]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the reply.  My original post was pretty generic in asking about docker-machine support.  Based on your response, let me expand on my use case.

My main client is a Linux laptop.  On the same LAN I have an edge compute node (an HPE EL300, somewhat similar to your IEI Tank dev kit: https://software.intel.com/en-us/iot/hardware/iei-tank-dev-kit-core) that is also running Linux and will be used to do inferencing at the edge.  In it, I've installed an UP AI Core mPCIe (Movidius) card.  What I'd like to do is to run ISS on my laptop and using docker-machine point the docker cli (and thereby ISS) at the docker instance on the EL300 so I can utilize Movidius.  Using docker-machine I'm able to control the docker engine on the EL300, but then when I launch ISS I get the error message from my previous post.  

I see in the ISS for Windows install docs (https://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-system-studio-docker-install-windows-configure-docker-toolbox) that the Docker Toolkit is utilized to create a Linux VirtualBox VM, and docker-machine is used to redirect docker client communication.  Minus the VM creation, I'm trying to accomplish the same thing on Linux.  To your point, I believe you're correct that it's just checks getting in my way.

I look forward to hearing the results of your open ticket.

Steve