Install Docker Desktopλ︎

Docker community edition provides the back-end services to run docker images in containers.

Docker Desktop provides a graphical UI for managing images, containers and volumes.

Install Docker Desktopλ︎

Docker desktop depends on Docker Community Edition and will install all the respective packages.

Debian Linux

Install Docker Desktop on Debian - Docker Docs

Debian Linux based distributions has several prerequisites packages (may already be installed).

apt install ca-certificates curl

Add the Docker team public key to Debian package manager, ensuring only official Docker packages are used

install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings && \
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc && \
chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

Add the Docker PPA to the Debian package manager, creating a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list file.

echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \
  $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

Update the available packages list with the Docker repository

apt-get update

Download the DEB package for Docker Desktop UI and install using Debian package manager

apt install ./Downloads/docker-desktop-4.19.0-amd64.deb

Post Installλ︎

User accounts that will run docker should be included in the docker group.

Debian Linux

Add the current operating system user account to the docker operating system group, creating the docker group if it doesn't already exist

groupadd docker && \
usermod -aG docker $USER

Logout of the current session (e.g. logout of Desktop) to apply the docker group to the user account.

groups command will list the operating system groups assigned to the current user.

Start Docker & Docker Desktopλ︎

Starting Docker Desktop will automatically start the underlying Docker community edition that provides the run-time for docker containers.

Launch Docker Desktop via the desktop application Launcher or via the command line:

Debian Linux

Use the Debian application launcher to start Docker Desktop, or use the systemctl command from a terminal.

systemctl --user start docker-desktop

Docker desktop may automatically restart itself on first run

Check Docker worksλ︎

Use the Docker tutorial image to check that Docker can run a container from an image (and also learn about Docker if new to the tools).

docker run -dp 80:80 docker/getting-started

The tutorial image will be downloaded and the image run in a container

❯ docker run -dp 80:80 docker/getting-started

Unable to find image 'docker/getting-started:latest' locally
latest: Pulling from docker/getting-started
c158987b0551: Already exists
1e35f6679fab: Pull complete
cb9626c74200: Pull complete
b6334b6ace34: Pull complete
f1d1c9928c82: Pull complete
9b6f639ec6ea: Pull complete
ee68d3549ec8: Pull complete
33e0cbbb4673: Pull complete
4f7e34c2de10: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:d79336f4812b6547a53e735480dde67f8f8f7071b414fbd9297609ffb989abc1
Status: Downloaded newer image for docker/getting-started:latest
215c033924260874013394d1f27fa5ec587f183ee9851d3a48884a1422fcc732

Open the tutorial website at http://localhost/ and follow the tutorial steps to learn more about Docker.

Increase concurrent download of image overlays

increase the max-concurrent-downloads value from the default 3 to 24, to download multi-layered docker images faster

.docker/config.json

{
    "auths": {},
    "credsStore": "desktop",
    "currentContext": "default",
    "max-concurrent-downloads": 24
}

Check installed versionsλ︎

Print the version of Docker installed and if Docker Desktop is running, then its version is also printed.

docker version

Example

Output from running Docker Desktop

❯ docker version
Client: Docker Engine - Community
 Cloud integration: v1.0.31
 Version:           23.0.6
 API version:       1.42
 Go version:        go1.19.9
 Git commit:        ef23cbc
 Built:             Fri May  5 21:18:13 2023
 OS/Arch:           linux/amd64
 Context:           desktop-linux

Server: Docker Desktop 4.19.0 (106363)
 Engine:
  Version:          23.0.5
  API version:      1.42 (minimum version 1.12)
  Go version:       go1.19.8
  Git commit:       94d3ad6
  Built:            Wed Apr 26 16:17:45 2023
  OS/Arch:          linux/amd64
  Experimental:     false
 containerd:
  Version:          1.6.20
  GitCommit:        2806fc1057397dbaeefbea0e4e17bddfbd388f38
 runc:
  Version:          1.1.5
  GitCommit:        v1.1.5-0-gf19387a
 docker-init:
  Version:          0.19.0
  GitCommit:        de40ad0

Check compose version

docker compose version

Example output

❯ docker compose version
Docker Compose version v2.17.3

Optimise Log rotationλ︎

Docker uses the json-file driver which creates JSON objects of log events from all containers. To avoid disk space issues, configure log rotation in a /etc/docker/daemon.json file

Configure Log rotation

/etc/docker/daemon.json

{
  "log-driver": "json-file",
  "log-opts": {
    "max-size": "10m",
    "max-file": "3"
  }
}

Use the local file logging driver if a longer logging history is desirable. The local file logging driver preserves 100Mb of logs per container (5 x 20Mb files) and uses automatic compression to greatly reduce disk consumption.

Use local file logging driver

/etc/docker/daemon.json

{
  "log-driver": "local",
  "log-opts": {
    "max-size": "10m"
  }
}

--log-driver flag with docker container create or docker run commands sets the log driver for the specific container, over-riding the global setting

JSON File logging driver