Installation from binaries (Engine)

Installation from binaries

This instruction set is meant for hackers who want to try out Docker on a variety of environments.

Before following these directions, you should really check if a packaged version of Docker is already available for your distribution. We have packages for many distributions, and more keep showing up all the time!

Check runtime dependencies

To run properly, docker needs the following software to be installed at runtime:

• iptables version 1.4 or later
• Git version 1.7 or later
• procps (or similar provider of a “ps” executable)
• XZ Utils 4.9 or later
• a properly mounted cgroupfs hierarchy (having a single, all-encompassing “cgroup” mount point is not sufficient)

Check kernel dependencies

Docker in daemon mode has specific kernel requirements. For details, check your distribution in Installation.

A 3.10 Linux kernel is the minimum requirement for Docker. Kernels older than 3.10 lack some of the features required to run Docker containers. These older versions are known to have bugs which cause data loss and frequently panic under certain conditions.

The latest minor version (3.x.y) of the 3.10 (or a newer maintained version) Linux kernel is recommended. Keeping the kernel up to date with the latest minor version will ensure critical kernel bugs get fixed.

Warning: Installing custom kernels and kernel packages is probably not supported by your Linux distribution’s vendor. Please make sure to ask your vendor about Docker support first before attempting to install custom kernels on your distribution.

Warning: Installing a newer kernel might not be enough for some distributions which provide packages which are too old or incompatible with newer kernels.

Note that Docker also has a client mode, which can run on virtually any Linux kernel (it even builds on OS X!).

Enable AppArmor and SELinux when possible

Please use AppArmor or SELinux if your Linux distribution supports either of the two. This helps improve security and blocks certain types of exploits. Your distribution’s documentation should provide detailed steps on how to enable the recommended security mechanism.

Some Linux distributions enable AppArmor or SELinux by default and they run a kernel which doesn’t meet the minimum requirements (3.10 or newer). Updating the kernel to 3.10 or newer on such a system might not be enough to start Docker and run containers. Incompatibilities between the version of AppArmor/SELinux user space utilities provided by the system and the kernel could prevent Docker from running, from starting containers or, cause containers to exhibit unexpected behaviour.

Warning: If either of the security mechanisms is enabled, it should not be disabled to make Docker or its containers run. This will reduce security in that environment, lose support from the distribution’s vendor for the system, and might break regulations and security policies in heavily regulated environments.

Get the Docker Engine binaries

You can download either the latest release binaries or a specific version. To get the list of stable release version numbers from GitHub, view the docker/docker releases page. You can get the MD5 and SHA256 hashes by appending .md5 and .sha256 to the URLs respectively

Get the Linux binaries

To download the latest version for Linux, use the following URLs:

https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/i386/docker-latest.tgz

https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/x86_64/docker-latest.tgz

To download a specific version for Linux, use the following URL patterns:

https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/i386/docker-<version>.tgz

https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/x86_64/docker-<version>.tgz

For example:

https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/i386/docker-1.11.0.tgz

https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/x86_64/docker-1.11.0.tgz

Note These instructions are for Docker Engine 1.11 and up. Engine 1.10 and under consists of a single binary, and instructions for those versions are different. To install version 1.10 or below, follow the instructions in the 1.10 documentation.

Install the Linux binaries

After downloading, you extract the archive, which puts the binaries in a directory named docker in your current location.

$ tar -xvzf docker-latest.tgz

docker/
docker/docker
docker/docker-containerd
docker/docker-containerd-ctr
docker/docker-containerd-shim
docker/docker-proxy
docker/docker-runc
docker/dockerd

Engine requires these binaries to be installed in your host’s $PATH. For example, to install the binaries in /usr/bin:

$ mv docker/* /usr/bin/

Note: If you already have Engine installed on your host, make sure you stop Engine before installing (killall docker), and install the binaries in the same location. You can find the location of the current installation with dirname $(which docker).

Run the Engine daemon on Linux

You can manually start the Engine in daemon mode using:

$ sudo dockerd &

The GitHub repository provides samples of init-scripts you can use to control the daemon through a process manager, such as upstart or systemd. You can find these scripts in the contrib directory.

For additional information about running the Engine in daemon mode, refer to the daemon command in the Engine command line reference.

Get the Mac OS X binary

The Mac OS X binary is only a client. You cannot use it to run the docker daemon. To download the latest version for Mac OS X, use the following URLs:

https://get.docker.com/builds/Darwin/x86_64/docker-latest.tgz

To download a specific version for Mac OS X, use the following URL pattern:

https://get.docker.com/builds/Darwin/x86_64/docker-<version>.tgz

For example:

https://get.docker.com/builds/Darwin/x86_64/docker-1.11.0.tgz

You can extract the downloaded archive either by double-clicking the downloaded .tgz or on the command line, using tar -xvzf docker-1.11.0.tgz. The client binary can be executed from any location on your filesystem.

Get the Windows binary

You can only download the Windows binary for version 1.9.1 onwards. Moreover, the 32-bit (i386) binary is only a client, you cannot use it to run the docker daemon. The 64-bit binary (x86_64) is both a client and daemon.

To download the latest version for Windows, use the following URLs:

https://get.docker.com/builds/Windows/i386/docker-latest.zip

https://get.docker.com/builds/Windows/x86_64/docker-latest.zip

To download a specific version for Windows, use the following URL pattern:

https://get.docker.com/builds/Windows/i386/docker-<version>.zip

https://get.docker.com/builds/Windows/x86_64/docker-<version>.zip

For example:

https://get.docker.com/builds/Windows/i386/docker-1.11.0.zip

https://get.docker.com/builds/Windows/x86_64/docker-1.11.0.zip

Note These instructions are for Engine 1.11 and up. Instructions for older versions are slightly different. To install version 1.10 or below, follow the instructions in the 1.10 documentation.

Giving non-root access

The docker daemon always runs as the root user, and the docker daemon binds to a Unix socket instead of a TCP port. By default that Unix socket is owned by the user root, and so, by default, you can access it with sudo.

If you (or your Docker installer) create a Unix group called docker and add users to it, then the docker daemon will make the ownership of the Unix socket read/writable by the docker group when the daemon starts. The docker daemon must always run as the root user, but if you run the docker client as a user in the docker group then you don’t need to add sudo to all the client commands.

Warning: The docker group (or the group specified with -G) is root-equivalent; see Docker Daemon Attack Surface details.

Upgrade Docker Engine

To upgrade your manual installation of Docker Engine on Linux, first kill the docker daemon:

$ killall docker

Then follow the regular installation steps.

Next steps

Continue with the User Guide.