page_title: Installation on Debian page_description: Instructions for installing Docker on Debian. page_keywords: Docker, Docker documentation, installation, debian
Docker is supported on the following versions of Debian:
Debian 8 comes with a 3.14.0 Linux kernel, and a docker.io
package which installs all its prerequisites from Debian's repository.
Note: Debian contains a much older KDE3/GNOME2 package called
docker
, so the package and the executable are calleddocker.io
.
To install the latest Debian package (may not be the latest Docker release):
$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install docker.io $ sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/docker.io /usr/local/bin/docker $ sudo sed -i '$acomplete -F _docker docker' /etc/bash_completion.d/docker.io
To verify that everything has worked as expected:
$ sudo docker run -i -t ubuntu /bin/bash
Which should download the ubuntu
image, and then start bash
in a container.
Note: If you want to enable memory and swap accounting see this.
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. From Docker 0.9.0 you can use the -G
flag to specify an alternative group.
Warning: The
docker
group (or the group specified with the-G
flag) isroot
-equivalent; see Docker Daemon Attack Surface details.
Example:
# Add the docker group if it doesn't already exist. $ sudo groupadd docker # Add the connected user "${USER}" to the docker group. # Change the user name to match your preferred user. # You may have to logout and log back in again for # this to take effect. $ sudo gpasswd -a ${USER} docker # Restart the Docker daemon. $ sudo service docker restart
Continue with the User Guide.