But secondly, containerization, despite its vulnerabilities through the years, does add a layer of security to applications. And we must not forget that irc clients have been exploited in the past. Remember the old adage, never irc as root.

1) scp

2) dpkg --set-selections

They don't want to apt install, they want to use docker :-)

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/but-i-dont-want-to-cure-cance...

I put docker-compose files in ~/configdata/_docker/

The docker-compose files always mount volumes inside the ~/configdata/ directory. So let's say irssi has a config directory to mount I'd mount it to ~/configdata/irssi/config/

Then I can just run a daily backup on ~/configdata/ using duplicati or whatever differential backup tool of your choice and be able to restore application state, easily move it to another server, etc.

Look at it the other way. Why muck up my OS with a bunch of tiny apps? Who knows what version I’ll pull in my repo today. Chances are good it’s outdated with weird patches.

The docker image is built by the devs. All the proper dependencies are baked into the image. It’s going to run exactly as intended every time, no surprises.

And I can pick up the docker file and my configs and run it exactly the same on any OS.

So this this would a turnkey way to run this somewhere centralized and persistent, and then you connect to it however you connect to that Docker container (e.g., SSH, remote desktop of some kind).

Of course, a non-Docker way to achieve simple persistence would be to just run a character-terminal IRC client in an SSH-able shell account (or VPS or AWS EC2), inside a `screen` or `tmux` session that can be detached and reattached when SSH-ing in from whatever devices.

(Persistence of your IRC server connections means things like you can see what you missed in scrollback, you aren't being noisy in your channels with join and part messages, you preserve your channel operator status and other channel modes without relying on bots, and you aren't leaking so much info about your movements in real time to random crazy people who hang out in Internet chat rooms.)

(Also, early on, if your leet channels attracted trolls, remaining connected meant that whatever automated countermeasures your client had could help defend the channel. Also, the more people who had channel operator status, the harder it would be for an attacker who, say, "netsplit" to hack ops, to de-op them all, before a remaining op's scripts detected the mass-deop attack, and took out the attacker. Also, your persistence bouncer or shell account obscured your real IP address, so if an attacker targeted your client's IP addr but not your home addr, such as with a protocol or flood attack, you could more likely get back on quickly. Trolls were often annoying, but it was also cyberpunk satisfying when your channel made short work of them.)

You don't _need_ docker, but if you are already set up for it then it's a boon. Adding an app for me to be very available across a fleet of hardware with ceph backed storage is a one-liner.

I've noticed a lot of people seem to think Docker is some dark art technology when it's really just an amalgamation of various things that you can do anyway.

Incidentally, when I was on dial up and before I had a home network (just one family PC) I started to learn networking by running things like IRC servers (unrealircd to be specific) and multiple clients locally (including eggies). I was really talking to myself in every sense. Was quite fun to give myself ops etc.