ROS 2 Humble Container For Incus

No more Ubuntu Re installs and VMs for new ROS Distros

ROS 2 is a sequel to the master-slave approach of ROS 1, and just like its prequel its mostly Ubuntu Distro specific but with a few know - hows from the previous Tutorials its possible to have various OS level containers that are just as fast as installing on the host system but are portable enough to not brick your system packages. The previous tutorials are listed below:

Creating a New Container:

ROS2 Humble is recommended to be installed in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

Assuming that the name of the Container is ros-humble

incus launch images:ubuntu/22.04 ros-humble

Launching the container

incus exec ros-humble -- sudo --login --user ubuntu

Launch Shortcut (Optional)

I get it, sometimes that login command looks way too tedious to type (I'm Lazy), so we can create an alias (a.k.a short-cut) to login easily using:

incus alias add ubuntu 'exec @ARGS@ -- su -l ubuntu'

Use this command only once, Its not required for subsequent newly created containers

This will now condense the login method to:

incus ubuntu ros-humble

Install ROS2 Humble

This is identical to the instructions available from the Official Documentation:

Update and Upgrade existing system packages:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Set Locale

locale  # check for UTF-8

sudo apt update && sudo apt install locales
sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

locale  # verify settings

Verify Locale

locale

Output:

LANG=C.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="C.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="C.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="C.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="C.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="C.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="C.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="C.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="C.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="C.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="C.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="C.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="C.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

Setup Sources

Ensure that the Ubuntu Universe repository is enabled

sudo apt install software-properties-common -y
sudo add-apt-repository universe

Add ROS2 GPG key with apt

sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl -y
sudo curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.key -o /usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg

Add repository to sources list

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg] http://packages.ros.org/ros2/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo $UBUNTU_CODENAME) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros2.list > /dev/null

Install ROS2 Packages

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install ros-humble-desktop ros-dev-tools -y

Add Environmental script to .bashrc

echo "source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Initialize Rosdep

sudo rosdep init
rosdep update

Optional Workflows:

GUI Support:

If you have not created the incus prior to this step, follow the instructions here, once the gui profile has been created, it can be added to our container.

incus profile add ros-humble gui

Reboot the container using incus reboot ros-humble

Validation:

incus ubuntu ros-humble

Install x11-apps and check for a gui:

sudo apt install x11-apps -y
xeyes

Nvidia Drivers with CUDA support:

incus config device add ros-humble gpu gpu gputype=physical
incus config set ros-humble nvidia.runtime=true
incus config set ros-humble nvidia.driver.capabilities=all

Reboot the container using incus reboot ros-humble

Validation:

incus ubuntu ros-humble

Run nvidia-smi:

nvidia-smi

Output:

Sat Jul 22 05:51:20 2023       
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 525.116.04   Driver Version: 525.116.04   CUDA Version: 12.0     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                               |                      |               MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce ...  Off  | 00000000:07:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| 30%   42C    P8    12W / 170W |    347MiB / 12288MiB |      4%      Default |
|                               |                      |                  N/A |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                  |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Install Conda / Mamba:

This has been covered in the tutorial here:

Follow this part whilst being in the container

Install VS-Code:

This has been covered in the tutorial here:

Follow this part whilst being in the container