moby/docs/sources/installation/windows.rst

title

Requirements and Installation on Windows

description

Docker's tutorial to run docker on Windows

keywords

Docker, Docker documentation, Windows, requirements, virtualbox, vagrant, git, ssh, putty, cygwin

Installing Docker on Windows

Docker can run on Windows using a VM like VirtualBox. You then run Linux within the VM.

Installation

1. Install virtualbox from https://www.virtualbox.org - or follow this tutorial

2. Install vagrant from http://www.vagrantup.com - or follow this tutorial

3. Install git with ssh from http://git-scm.com/downloads - or follow this tutorial

We recommend having at least 2Gb of free disk space and 2Gb of RAM (or more).

Opening a command prompt

First open a cmd prompt. Press Windows key and then press “R” key. This will open the RUN dialog box for you. Type “cmd” and press Enter. Or you can click on Start, type “cmd” in the “Search programs and files” field, and click on cmd.exe.

This should open a cmd prompt window.

Alternatively, you can also use a Cygwin terminal, or Git Bash (or any other command line program you are usually using). The next steps would be the same.

Launch an Ubuntu virtual server

Let’s download and run an Ubuntu image with docker binaries already installed.

git clone https://github.com/dotcloud/docker.git 
cd docker
vagrant up

Congratulations! You are running an Ubuntu server with docker installed on it. You do not see it though, because it is running in the background.

Log onto your Ubuntu server

Let’s log into your Ubuntu server now. To do so you have two choices:

• Use Vagrant on Windows command prompt OR
• Use SSH

Using Vagrant on Windows Command Prompt

Run the following command

vagrant ssh

You may see an error message starting with “ssh executable not found”. In this case it means that you do not have SSH in your PATH. If you do not have SSH in your PATH you can set it up with the “set” command. For instance, if your ssh.exe is in the folder named “C:Program Files (x86)Gitbin”, then you can run the following command:

set PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin

Using SSH

First step is to get the IP and port of your Ubuntu server. Simply run:

vagrant ssh-config 

You should see an output with HostName and Port information. In this example, HostName is 127.0.0.1 and port is 2222. And the User is “vagrant”. The password is not shown, but it is also “vagrant”.

You can now use this information for connecting via SSH to your server. To do so you can:

• Use putty.exe OR
• Use SSH from a terminal

Use putty.exe

You can download putty.exe from this page http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html Launch putty.exe and simply enter the information you got from last step.

Open, and enter user = vagrant and password = vagrant.

SSH from a terminal

You can also run this command on your favorite terminal (windows prompt, cygwin, git-bash, …). Make sure to adapt the IP and port from what you got from the vagrant ssh-config command.

ssh vagrant@127.0.0.1 –p 2222

Enter user = vagrant and password = vagrant.

Congratulations, you are now logged onto your Ubuntu Server, running on top of your Windows machine !

Running Docker

First you have to be root in order to run docker. Simply run the following command:

sudo su

You are now ready for the docker’s “hello world” example. Run

docker run busybox echo hello world

All done!

Now you can continue with the hello_world example.

Troubleshooting

VM does not boot

If you run into this error message "The VM failed to remain in the 'running' state while attempting to boot", please check that your computer has virtualization technology available and activated by going to the BIOS. Here's an example for an HP computer (System configuration / Device configuration)

On some machines the BIOS menu can only be accessed before startup. To access BIOS in this scenario you should restart your computer and press ESC/Enter when prompted to access the boot and BIOS controls. Typically the option to allow virtualization is contained within the BIOS/Security menu.

Docker is not installed

If you run into this error message "The program 'docker' is currently not installed", try deleting the docker folder and restart from launch_ubuntu