Install Docker Engine on CentOS
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
To get started with Docker Engine on CentOS, make sure you meet the prerequisites, then install Docker.
Prerequisites
OS requirements
To install Docker Engine, you need a maintained version of CentOS 7 or 8. Archived versions aren’t supported or tested.
The centos-extras
repository must be enabled. This repository is enabled by default, but if you have disabled it, you need to re-enable it.
The overlay2
storage driver is recommended.
Uninstall old versions
Older versions of Docker were called docker
or docker-engine
. If these are installed, uninstall them, along with associated dependencies.
$ sudo yum remove docker \
docker-client \
docker-client-latest \
docker-common \
docker-latest \
docker-latest-logrotate \
docker-logrotate \
docker-engine
It’s OK if yum
reports that none of these packages are installed.
The contents of /var/lib/docker/
, including images, containers, volumes, and networks, are preserved. The Docker Engine package is now called docker-ce
.
Installation methods
You can install Docker Engine in different ways, depending on your needs:
- Most users set up Docker’s repositories and install from them, for ease of installation and upgrade tasks. This is the recommended approach.
- Some users download the RPM package and install it manually and manage upgrades completely manually. This is useful in situations such as installing Docker on air-gapped systems with no access to the internet.
- In testing and development environments, some users choose to use automated convenience scripts to install Docker.
Install using the repository
Before you install Docker Engine for the first time on a new host machine, you need to set up the Docker repository. Afterward, you can install and update Docker from the repository.
Set up the repository
Install the yum-utils
package (which provides the yum-config-manager
utility) and set up the stable repository.
$ sudo yum install -y yum-utils
$ sudo yum-config-manager \
--add-repo \
https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo
Optional: Enable the nightly or test repositories.
These repositories are included in the docker.repo
file above but are disabled by default. You can enable them alongside the stable repository. The following command enables the nightly repository.
$ sudo yum-config-manager --enable docker-ce-nightly
To enable the test channel, run the following command:
$ sudo yum-config-manager --enable docker-ce-test
You can disable the nightly or test repository by running the yum-config-manager
command with the --disable
flag. To re-enable it, use the --enable
flag. The following command disables the nightly repository.
$ sudo yum-config-manager --disable docker-ce-nightly
Learn about nightly and test channels.
Install Docker Engine
- Install the latest version of Docker Engine and containerd, or go to the next step to install a specific version:
$ sudo yum install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io
If prompted to accept the GPG key, verify that the fingerprint matches060A 61C5 1B55 8A7F 742B 77AA C52F EB6B 621E 9F35
, and if so, accept it.Got multiple Docker repositories?If you have multiple Docker repositories enabled, installing or updating without specifying a version in theyum install
oryum update
command always installs the highest possible version, which may not be appropriate for your stability needs.This command installs Docker, but it doesn’t start Docker. It also creates adocker
group, however, it doesn’t add any users to the group by default. - To install a specific version of Docker Engine, list the available versions in the repo, then select and install:a. List and sort the versions available in your repo. This example sorts results by version number, highest to lowest, and is truncated:
$ yum list docker-ce --showduplicates | sort -r docker-ce.x86_64 3:18.09.1-3.el7 docker-ce-stable docker-ce.x86_64 3:18.09.0-3.el7 docker-ce-stable docker-ce.x86_64 18.06.1.ce-3.el7 docker-ce-stable docker-ce.x86_64 18.06.0.ce-3.el7 docker-ce-stable
The list returned depends on which repositories are enabled, and is specific to your version of CentOS (indicated by the.el7
suffix in this example).b. Install a specific version by its fully qualified package name, which is the package name (docker-ce
) plus the version string (2nd column) starting at the first colon (:
), up to the first hyphen, separated by a hyphen (-
). For example,docker-ce-18.09.1
.$ sudo yum install docker-ce-<VERSION_STRING> docker-ce-cli-<VERSION_STRING> containerd.io
This command installs Docker, but it doesn’t start Docker. It also creates adocker
group, however, it doesn’t add any users to the group by default. - Start Docker.
$ sudo systemctl start docker
- Verify that Docker Engine is installed correctly by running the
hello-world
image.$ sudo docker run hello-world
This command downloads a test image and runs it in a container. When the container runs, it prints a message and exits.
This installs and runs Docker Engine. Use sudo
to run Docker commands. Continue to Linux postinstall to allow non-privileged users to run Docker commands and for other optional configuration steps.
Upgrade Docker Engine
To upgrade Docker Engine, follow the installation instructions, choosing the new version you want to install.
Install from a package
If you cannot use Docker’s repository to install Docker, you can download the .rpm
file for your release and install it manually. You need to download a new file each time you want to upgrade Docker Engine.
- Go to https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/ and choose your version of CentOS. Then browse to
x86_64/stable/Packages/
and download the.rpm
file for the Docker version you want to install.NoteTo install a nightly or test (pre-release) package, change the wordstable
in the above URL tonightly
ortest
. Learn about nightly and test channels. - Install Docker Engine, changing the path below to the path where you downloaded the Docker package.
$ sudo yum install /path/to/package.rpm
Docker is installed but not started. Thedocker
group is created, but no users are added to the group. - Start Docker.
$ sudo systemctl start docker
- Verify that Docker Engine is installed correctly by running the
hello-world
image.$ sudo docker run hello-world
This command downloads a test image and runs it in a container. When the container runs, it prints a message and exits.
This installs and runs Docker Engine. Use sudo
to run Docker commands. Continue to Post-installation steps for Linux to allow non-privileged users to run Docker commands and for other optional configuration steps.
Upgrade Docker Engine
To upgrade Docker Engine, download the newer package file and repeat the installation procedure, using yum -y upgrade
instead of yum -y install
, and point to the new file.
Install using the convenience script
Docker provides a convenience script at get.docker.com to install Docker into development environments quickly and non-interactively. The convenience script is not recommended for production environments, but can be used as an example to create a provisioning script that is tailored to your needs. Also refer to the install using the repository steps to learn about installation steps to install using the package repository. The source code for the script is open source, and can be found in the docker-install
repository on GitHub.
Always examine scripts downloaded from the internet before running them locally. Before installing, make yourself familiar with potential risks and limitations of the convenience script:
- The script requires
root
orsudo
privileges to run. - The script attempts to detect your Linux distribution and version and configure your package management system for you, and does not allow you to customize most installation parameters.
- The script installs dependencies and recommendations without asking for confirmation. This may install a large number of packages, depending on the current configuration of your host machine.
- By default, the script installs the latest stable release of Docker, containerd, and runc. When using this script to provision a machine, this may result in unexpected major version upgrades of Docker. Always test (major) upgrades in a test environment before deploying to your production systems.
- The script is not designed to upgrade an existing Docker installation. When using the script to update an existing installation, dependencies may not be updated to the expected version, causing outdated versions to be used.
Tip: preview script steps before running
You can run the script with the DRY_RUN=1
option to learn what steps the script will execute during installation:
$ curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
$ DRY_RUN=1 sh ./get-docker.sh
This example downloads the script from get.docker.com and runs it to install the latest stable release of Docker on Linux:
$ curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
$ sudo sh get-docker.sh
Executing docker install script, commit: 7cae5f8b0decc17d6571f9f52eb840fbc13b2737
<...>
Docker is installed. The docker
service starts automatically on Debian based distributions. On RPM
based distributions, such as CentOS, Fedora, RHEL or SLES, you need to start it manually using the appropriate systemctl
or service
command. As the message indicates, non-root users cannot run Docker commands by default.
Use Docker as a non-privileged user, or install in rootless mode?
The installation script requires
root
orsudo
privileges to install and use Docker. If you want to grant non-root users access to Docker, refer to the post-installation steps for Linux. Docker can also be installed withoutroot
privileges, or configured to run in rootless mode. For instructions on running Docker in rootless mode, refer to run the Docker daemon as a non-root user (rootless mode).
Install pre-releases
Docker also provides a convenience script at test.docker.com to install pre-releases of Docker on Linux. This script is equivalent to the script at get.docker.com
, but configures your package manager to enable the “test” channel from our package repository, which includes both stable and pre-releases (beta versions, release-candidates) of Docker. Use this script to get early access to new releases, and to evaluate them in a testing environment before they are released as stable.
To install the latest version of Docker on Linux from the “test” channel, run:
$ curl -fsSL https://test.docker.com -o test-docker.sh
$ sudo sh test-docker.sh
<...>
Upgrade Docker after using the convenience script
If you installed Docker using the convenience script, you should upgrade Docker using your package manager directly. There is no advantage to re-running the convenience script, and it can cause issues if it attempts to re-add repositories which have already been added to the host machine.
Uninstall Docker Engine
- Uninstall the Docker Engine, CLI, and Containerd packages:
$ sudo yum remove docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io
- Images, containers, volumes, or customized configuration files on your host are not automatically removed. To delete all images, containers, and volumes:
$ sudo rm -rf /var/lib/docker $ sudo rm -rf /var/lib/containerd
You must delete any edited configuration files manually.