Container User and Network Settings

The default bulker templates set the container user to the active user and map the container network to match the host network. This works well for most images, but some containers don’t work with these runtime settings.

For these cases, use the no_user and no_network attributes in the manifest:

  - command: rstudio-server
    docker_image: waldronlab/bioconductor:release
    docker_command: " "
    no_user: true
    no_network: true

• no_user: true — run as root instead of the current user. Needed for containers that require root access.
• no_network: true — don’t add --network=host. Needed for containers that manage their own network configuration.

These attributes apply per-command, so you can mix them within a single manifest.

Tera templates

Bulker uses Tera as its template engine (replacing Jinja2 from the Python version). The default templates handle Docker and Apptainer command generation. For most use cases, the manifest attributes (docker_args, no_user, no_network) and volumes and environment variables provide enough customization without modifying templates directly.