[R-sig-Debian] getting started with rocker

[Luben Dimov]

Thank you, Dirk, that worked like a charm! Last couple of questions today:

1. If I will no longer use the image that has the old R and RStudio versions,
how do I delete those images? I understand that I can't just browse to that
folder and delete.

Here is what "sudo docker images" produces, so I'm not even sure if the old
images are still there:

IMAGE                      ID             DISK USAGE   CONTENT SIZE   EXTRA
hello-world:latest         d2c94e258dcb       13.3kB             0B    U   
r-base:latest              182b915af647        897MB             0B        
rocker/geospatial:latest   3e05f39c91cc       4.19GB             0B        
rocker/r-ver:latest        aee3e2a32c93        945MB             0B        
rocker/rstudio:latest      d68b530808b5       2.49GB             0B        
rocker/tidyverse:latest    94209eda92ec       2.93GB             0B        
rocker/verse:latest        a163ecb251d6       4.07GB             0B        
ubuntu:latest              61b2756d6fa9       78.1MB             0B    U   


2. (A possibly very stupid question) If I have to log in with user and password
of rstudio and yourpassword after running:

docker run --rm -ti -e PASSWORD=yourpassword -p 8787:8787 rocker/rstudio

then if I run:

docker run --rm -ti -e PASSWORD=yourpassword -p 8787:8787 rocker/tidyverse

do I have to log in with user and password of tidyverse and yourpassword?

I can get lots of help with R around here, but zero help with docker, rocker,
and Linux, so I really appreciate your help!
Luben

-----Original Message-----
From: Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd using debian.org>
To: Luben Dimov <luben.dimov using gmail.com>
Cc: r-sig-debian <r-sig-debian using r-project.org>
Subject: Re: [R-sig-Debian] getting started with rocker
Date: Thu, 14 May 2026 09:54:06 -0500


Hi Luben,

On 14 May 2026 at 10:35, Luben Dimov wrote:
> First time docker and rocker user here (and no programming expertise). After
> trying on and off for several months, I managed to install and run rocker on
> my
> Linux Mint, with RStudio running in the web browser
> at http://localhost:8787/ and I was finally able to figure out how to access
> files, graphs, etc., that I save in RStudio at localhost:8787 by mounting a
> folder from my host machine in the container, so files are saved on my
> system. 
> 
> A newbie question... Running this in the Linux terminal:
> 
> sudo docker run --rm -ti rocker/r-ver

Small aside: this is discouraged. You are generally better off making
yourself a member of the docker group so that you in your account can run
docker. Unconditionally letting docker run as root is somewhat dangerous.

See eg here https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/linux-postinstall/ or via
different tutorials.

> starts the latest version of R, the 4 .6.0 (2026-04-24)
> 
> But running either:
> sudo docker run --rm -ti -e PASSWORD=yourpassword -p 8787:8787 -v ~/rstudio-
> projects:/home/rstudio rocker/tidyverse
> or
> sudo docker run --rm -ti -e PASSWORD=yourpassword -p 8787:8787 -v ~/rstudio-
> projects:/home/rstudio rocker/rstudio
> 
> and then opening the localhost:8787, shows that it is running R version 4.4.1
> (2024-06-14)
> 
> How do I update the R version in the rocker container?

Usually by downloading updated containers:  `docker pull rocker/rstudio`.

Cheers, Dirk