Docker! Steam! PulseAudio!

Run Steam inside an isolated Docker container on your Linux desktop! See its sights via X11 forwarding! Hear its sounds through the magic of PulseAudio and SSH tunnels!

Instructions

1. Install PulseAudio Preferences. Debian/Ubuntu users can do this:

    sudo apt-get install paprefs
   

2. Launch PulseAudio Preferences, go to the "Network Server" tab, and check the "Enable network access to local sound devices" checkbox

3. Restart PulseAudio

    sudo service pulseaudio restart
   

   On some distributions, it may be necessary to completely restart your computer. You can confirm that the settings have successfully been applied using the pax11publish command. You should see something like this (the important part is in bold):

   Server: {ShortAlphanumericString}unix:/run/user/1000/pulse/native tcp:YourHostname:4713 tcp6:YourHostname:4713

   Cookie: ReallyLongAlphanumericString

4. Install Docker if you haven't already

5. Clone this repository and get right in there

    git clone https://github.com/jlund/docker-steam-pulseaudio.git && cd docker-steam-pulseaudio
   

6. Generate an SSH public key, if you don't already have one

    ssh-keygen
   

7. Copy your SSH public key into place

    cp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub .
   

8. Build the container

    docker build -t steam .
   

9. Create an entry in your .ssh/config file for easy access. It should look like this:

    Host docker-steam
      User      steam
      Port      2222
      HostName  127.0.0.1
      RemoteForward 64713 localhost:4713
      ForwardX11 yes
   

10. Run the container and forward the appropriate ports

     docker run -d -p 127.0.0.1:2222:22 steam
    

11. Connect via SSH and launch Steam using the provided PulseAudio wrapper script

     ssh docker-steam steam-pulseaudio-forward
    

Author Information

Since I upgraded Ubuntu I've been having problems getting Steam to work properly. I forked Joshua Lund's docker-chrome-pulseaudio repo: https://github.com/jlund/docker-chrome-pulseaudio And adapted it to work with Steam.