LXC: Installing Docker on a Debian CT

A quick guide to getting docker running on a Debian CT

CT Configuration

First make sure your container is running in privileged mode and nested is enabled in Options > Features

Installing Docker

Then you’ll need to login and install docker.

sudo apt install docker.io -y && sudo systemctl enable docker

Then start and confirm the service

sudo systemctl start docker && sudo systemctl status docker

To ensure Docker is running correctly you can try to run a simple hello-world container

sudo docker run hello-world

Install Docker Compose

Debian unfortunately only ships with docker compose v1. The plugin for v2 needs to be installed from dockers package repo

# Add Docker's official GPG key:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

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

Then update and install docker compose

sudo apt update && sudo apt install docker-compose-plugin

Now check to make sure v2 is installed

docker compose version

Run Docker from a non-root user without sudo

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

You’ll need to logout and log back in for the change to take effect

Installing Lazydocker

Lazydocker is basically a CLI portainer. Rather than running a service for a single container running in LXC. I like to install lazy docker to manage things. Install is easy by using the script they provide, but I prefer to run my own.

#!/bin/bash

# allow specifying different destination directory
DIR="/usr/local/bin"

# map different architecture variations to the available binaries
ARCH=$(uname -m)
case $ARCH in
    i386|i686) ARCH=x86 ;;
    armv6*) ARCH=armv6 ;;
    armv7*) ARCH=armv7 ;;
    aarch64*) ARCH=arm64 ;;
esac

# prepare the download URL
GITHUB_LATEST_VERSION=$(curl -L -s -H 'Accept: application/json' https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazydocker/releases/latest | sed -e 's/.*"tag_name":"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/')
GITHUB_FILE="lazydocker_${GITHUB_LATEST_VERSION//v/}_$(uname -s)_${ARCH}.tar.gz"
GITHUB_URL="https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazydocker/releases/download/${GITHUB_LATEST_VERSION}/${GITHUB_FILE}"

# install/update the local binary
curl -L -o lazydocker.tar.gz $GITHUB_URL
tar xzvf lazydocker.tar.gz lazydocker
install -Dm 755 lazydocker -t "$DIR"
rm lazydocker lazydocker.tar.gz

Now you can simply run it with the following command.

lazydocker