Docker is a cli only app, if you want a gui interface check out docker desktop
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The crazy pills are the first step in learning. Embrace the crazy. Take more pills.
It worked for me!
Which pills would you recommend?
Once it’s installed in the terminal, how the hell do I find docker so I can start playing with it?
It's not installed "in the terminal." It's installed on the computer; the terminal is just one way you might interact with it.
In particular, docker is a type of program called a 'daemon' or 'server': it runs in the background and doesn't have an interface, per se. You can run docker commands and get their output, and you can of course interact with the services you're using docker to run, but there is no "docker app" that runs as a foreground interactive process (either GUI app or ncurses terminal app).
Once it’s installed in the terminal, how the hell do I find docker so I can start playing with it?
Type docker
in the terminal, it's a CLI application.
But it sounds like you might want to install Docker Desktop, which does give you a GUI to use.
To be fair, you're taking on a lot of new things at once. You can spin up docker containers on windows too, all while using a UI. I think it's great your exposing yourself to self hosting, linux, command line interface, and containerization all at once, but don't beat yourself up for it taking longer than expected. A lot of it takes time. I encourage you to keep trying and playing. Good luck!
There is docker desktop on Linux too.
sudo apt install docker flatpak -y
# add flathub if not already there
flatpak install docker
Edit: please use Podman. And if you think about Virtualbox, please use Virt-manager instead. Both are RedHat products and they are pretty awesome. Podman is more secure and works well for your job, it is letter-for-letter compatible with docker. You can use podman-compose if you need) but that requires to run a daemon which is also possible.
You can use Podman with many container sources natively, while docker only allows dockerhub. Says enough.
Not recommended as for one it is proprietary and two its more confusing to have tons of buttons than it is to write a docker compose.
Keep in mind that you're not just learning to use linux, but also learning to use docker,and docker is a complex tool by itself, which makes your journey significantly harder.
I never user Sabnzbd so I wouldn't be of much help. However, you could post some of the problems you find, so that other people lay help you.
Docker is one of the container technologies
Containers vs Images
This is a very simplified explanation, which hopefully clears up for you. As with all simplifications, they aren't entirely correct.
Containers put processes, files, and networking into a space where they are secluded from the rest. You main OS is called the host and the container is called the guest. You can selectively share resources with the guest. To use an analogy, if you house were the computer with linux, if you took a room, put tools and resources for those tools into it, put workers into it, got them to start working and locked the door, they'd be contained in the room, unable to break out. If you want to give workers access to resources, you either a window, a corridor, or even a door depending on much access you want to give them.
Containers are created from an image. Think of it as the tools, resources, and configuration required every time you create a room in your house for workers to do a job. The woodworkers will need different tools and resources than say metalworkers.
Most images are stored on DockerHub. So when you do docker pull linuxserver/sonarr
you download the image. When you do docker run linuxserver/sonarr
you create a container from an image.
Installation
You're on Cinnamon Mint which is linux distribution derived from another linux distribution called debian. You have to follow the installation instructions. Everything is there. If something doesn't work, it's most likely because you skipped a step. The most important ones are the post-installation steps:
- Adding your user to the docker group
- Logging out and back in (or simply restarting)
Those are the most commonly missed steps. I've fallen for this trap too!
Local help
To use linux, you need to learn about ways to help yourself or find help. On linux, most well-written programs print a help. Simply running the command without any arguments most often output a help text --> running docker
does so. If they don't, then the --help
flag often does --> docker --help
. The shorthand is -h
--> docker -h
.
Some commands have sub commands e.g docker run
, docker image
, docker ps
, ... . Those subcommands also take flags of which -h
and --help
are available.
The help output is often not extensive and programs often have a manual. To access it the command is man
--> man find
will output the manual for the find
command. Docker doesn't have a local manual but an online one.
For clarification when running a command there are different ways to interpret the text after the command:
Flags/Options
These are named parameters to the command. Some do not take input like -h
and --help
which are called flags. Some do like --file /etc/passwd
and are often called options.
Arguments
These are unnamed parameters and each command interprets them differently. echo "hello world"
--> echo
is the command and "hello world"
is the argument. Some commands can take multiple arguments
Running containers
Imperatively
As described above docker run linuxserver/sonarr
runs an image in a container. However, it runs in the foreground (as opposed to the background in what is most often called a "daemon"). Starting in the foreground is most likely not how you want to run things as that means if you close your terminal, you end the process too. To run something in the background, you use docker run --detatch linuxserver/sonarr
.
You can pass options like -v
or --volume
to make a file or folder from your host system available in the guest e.g -v /path/on/host:/tmp/path/in/guest
. Or -p
/ --port
to forward a host port to a guest port e.g -p 8080:80
. That means if you access port 8080
on your host, the traffic will be forwarded to port 80
in the guest.
These are imperatives as in you command the computer to do a specific action. Run that docker image, stop that docker container, restart these containers, start a container with this port forward and that volume with this user ...
Declaratively
If you don't want to keep typing the same commands, you can declare everything about your containers up front. Their volumes, ports, environment variables, which image is used, which network card/interface they have access to, which other network they share with other containers, and so on.
This is done with docker-compose
or docker compose
for newer docker versions (not all operating systems have the new docker version).
This already a long text, so if you want to know more, the best resource is the docker compose manual and the compose file reference.
Hopefully this helped with the basics and understanding what you're doing. There are probably great video resources out there that explain it more didactically than I do with steps you can follow along.
Good luck!
I'm also pretty new to Linux, but I've finally gotten a bit of a grasp on it. I started learning Linux to set up a home server, so I also jumped straight into Docker. You have gotten some thorough replies, but I thought I'd share my chaotic journey with it that has ended in a decent ratio of success vs confusion. Note: I have used Ubuntu from the start.
Don't use docker desktop. It's garbage. Also, don't use the Snap image.
$sudo apt install docker.io
$sudo apt install docker-compose
Those are both cli "programs". They aren't apps like you have on Windows. It seems VERY intimidating to talk into the void of the terminal, but you'll build confidence. Docker commands work like any other commands, all in the same place.
Now install Portainer CE. The instructions are very simple to follow. You can reach Portainer through your browser at the localhost address it gives you, which you type directly into the URL bar. I think it's http://localhost:9000.
Portainer will give you an easy visual way to manage Docker. You can perform many tasks through Portainer instead of using the command line. Honestly, I'm pretty sure you could do everything on Portainer and not even touch the terminal. I don't suggest that because you will have to have at least a basic understanding of how Linux and Docker work. You will be confused, and you will feel crazy. Eventually, you'll get more comfortable living in that psychosis.
On to Docker Compose!! This is my preferred way to run containers. I have a designated folder in /opt that I use for my compose files. This way, I know exactly how I set up my programs. My memory is awful and I tweak things so often that I'll completely forget how I have even gotten to this point or where ANY of my files are. It's pretty easy to find docker compose files online that you can copy and paste and it instantly works!
To make it simple, after I have saved my docker-compose.yaml file in the designated folder, I right click on the empty area and choose "open in terminal".
$sudo docker-compose up -d
The -d instructs the program to continue to run, even if you exit out of the terminal. At this point, your container will also show up in portainer!
I think that covers the basics. My biggest tip is to keep a notepad handy to write down commands that you have to search for. Your bookmarks will fill up very quickly otherwise. Expect to get stuck sometimes. Expect to spend hours trying to troubleshoot an issue, then have it suddenly work with no idea what you actually did to fix it. Accept the win and never touch it again.
I have done fresh installs many times. Some because I've played with 10 different programs that I decided against and want the leftover files gone, some because I wanted to try different mixes of distros, and once because I legitimately broke the OS.
Keep your important stuff on an external drive to avoid any loss and don't be afraid to mess around with it!
Btw, I'm a huge KDE plasma fan. It's lighter than GNOME, but very user friendly. I've settled on Kubuntu as my distro of choice.
Don't use docker-compose anymore, it's been obsolete for a while now and won't be getting new features.
It's best to add the docker official repo and install docker and docker-compose-plugin from there.
The -plugin version acts as a docker subcommand (docker
compose) and will be updated alongside docker going forward.
Well said. I've been using Linux for 15 years and using Docker for 6 years. I couldn't have communicated as well as you did. You have a knack for teaching.
There's not a fantastic GUI for managing docker. There are a few like dockge (my favorite) or Portainer.
I recommend spending some time learning docker run
with exposed ports, bind volumes (map local folders from your drive to folders inside the container so you can access your files, configs, content, etc. Also so you don't lose it when you delete the container and pull a newer version).
Once you've done that, check out the spec page for docker-compose.yaml
. This is what you'll eventually want to use to run your apps. It's a single file that describes all the configuration and details required for multiple docker containers to run in the same environment. ie: postgres version 4.2 with a volume and 1 exposed port, nginx latest version with 2 volumes, 4 mapped ports, a hostname, restart unless-stopped, and running as user 1000:1000, etc.
I've been using docker for home a LIGHT business applications for 8 years now and docker-compose.yaml
is really all you need until you start wanting high availability and cloud orchestration.
Some quick tips though.
- Search
some-FOSS-app-name docker-compose
read through a dozen or so templates. Check the spec page to see what most of the terms mean. It's the best way to learn how to structure your own compose files later. - Use other people's
compose.yaml
files as templates to start from. Expect to change a few things for your own setup. - NEVER use
restart: always
. Never. Change it torestart: unless-stopped
. Nothing is more annoying than stopping an app and having it keep doom spiraling. Especially at boot. - Take a minute to set the docker daemon or service to run at boot. It takes 1 google and 30 seconds, but it'll save you when you drunkenly decide to update your host OS right before bed.
- Use mapped folders for everything. If you map
/srv/dumb-app/data:/data
then anything that container saves to the/data
folder is accessible to you on your host machine (with whatever user:group is running inside the container, so check that). If you use the docker volumes like EVERYONE seems to like doing, it's a pain to ever get that data back out if you want to use it outside of docker.
I can at least assure you that as a developer, docker is annoying to set up and their documentation is confusing.
Most things in Linux are easier to set up but sometimes installing things happens to be harder than it should be and docker is one of them.
You should keep in mind that compared to other OSs, a lot of Linux software is CLI only, so they won't always show up in the applications list and you'll need to check if you have it in a terminal.
Is there a Linux for people who are deeply entrenched in how Windows works?
Zorin is this, though your choice of Mint is good too. It will not help you understand docker though.
If you're trying to do Audibookshelf on a home server CasaOS made docker super easy for me.
Linux is a slightly different way of thinking. There are any number of ways that you can solve any problem you have. In Windows there are usually only one or two that work. This is largely a result of the hacker mentality from which linux and Unix came from. "If you don't like how it works, rewrite it your way" and "Read the F***ing Manual" were frequent refrains when I started playing with linux.
Mint is a fine distro which is based off of Ubuntu, if I remember correctly. Most documentation that applies to Ubuntu will also apply to you.
Not sure what exactly you installed, but I'm guessing that you did something along the lines of sudo apt-get install docker
.
If you did that without doing anything ahead of time, what you probably got was a slightly out of date version of docker only from Mint's repositories. Follow the instructions here to uninstall whatever you installed and install docker from docker's own repositories.
The Docker Desktop that you may be used to from Windows is available for linux, however it is not part of the default install usually. You might look at this documentation.
I don't use it, as I prefer ctop combined with docker-compose.
Towards that end, here is my docker-compose.yaml
for my instance of Audiobookshelf. I have it connected to my Tailscale tailnet, but if you comment out the tailscale service stuff and uncomment the port section in the audiobookshelf service, you can run it directly. Assuming your not making any changes,
Create a directory somewhere,
mkdir ~/docker
mkdir ~/docker/audiobookshelf
This creates a directory in your home directory called docker and then a directory within that one called audiobookshelf. Now we want to enter that directory.
cd ~/docker/audiobookshelf
Then create your docker compose file
touch docker-compose.yaml
You can edit this file with whatever text editor you like, but I prefer micro which you may not have installed.
micro docker-compose.yaml
and then paste the contents into the file and change whatever setting you need to for your system. At a minimum you will need to change the volumes section so that the podcast and audiobook paths point to the correct location on your system. it follows the format :
.
Once you've made all the needed changes, save and exit the editor and start the the instance by typing
sudo docker compose up -d
Now, add the service directly to your tailnet by opening a shell in the tailscale container
sudo docker exec -it audiobookshelf-tailscale /bin/sh
and then typing
tailscale up
copy the link it gives you into your browser to authenticate the instance. Assuming that neither you or I made any typos you should now be able to access audiobookshelf from http://books If you chose to comment out all the tailscale stuff you would find it at http://localhost:13378
docker-compose.yaml
version: "3.7"
services:
tailscale:
container_name: audiobookshelf-tailscale
hostname: books # This will become the tailscale device name
image: ghcr.io/tailscale/tailscale:latest
volumes:
- "./tailscale_var_lib:/var/lib" # State data will be stored in this directory
- "/dev/net/tun:/dev/net/tun" # Required for tailscale to work
cap_add: # Required for tailscale to work
- net_admin
- sys_module
command: tailscaled
restart: unless-stopped
audiobookshelf:
container_name: audiobookshelf
image: ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf:latest
restart: unless-stopped
# ports: # Not needed due to tailscale
# - 13378:80
volumes:
- '/mnt/nas/old_media_server/media/books/Audio Books:/audiobooks' # This line has quotes because there is a space that needed to be escaped.
- /mnt/nas/old_media_server/media/podcasts:/podcasts # See, no quotes needed here, better to have them though.
- /opt/audiobookshelf/config:/config # I store my docker services in the /opt directory. You may want to change this to './config' and './metadata' while your playing around
- /opt/audiobookshelf/metadata:/metadata
network_mode: service:tailscale # This line tells the audiobookshelf container to send all traffic to tailscale container
I've left my docker-compose file as-is so you can see how it works in my setup.
I remember being so lost in the dark when starting docker. There's 2 main approaches to launching docker containers. One is with CLI arguments and one is from a docker-compose.yml file.
I highly recommend the latter.
Try going to chatGPT and ask it to write a docker compose file for whatever service you're trying to stand up.
There's no point in asking ChatGPT for a generic compose, most docker images will recommend a compose that's specifically written for them.
Apt install docker.io
docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9443:9443 --name portainer --restart=always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v portainer_data:/data portainer/portainer-ce:latest
Go to IP:8000 and now you can build docker compose stacks. A far easier way to learn docker.
OP this is the answer but Ill provide simple steps in case this is not clear enough:
- Install docker
- Install docker-compose
- Install portainer (command from the post above)
- open Portainer GUI in browser using IP:8000 (from here you can do everything in GUI)
- go to stacks and create a new stack
- edit docker-compose for audiobookshelf - modify folder paths for volumes (example - change
./audiobooks:/audiobooks
to/path/to/folder:/audiobooks
) - paste that in stack and hit deploy
- go to IP:13378 to open Audiobookshelf GUI
- enjoy
I think it will be easier to use docker compose with a premade docker compose file.
Create a new directory cd into it and then nano docker-compose.yaml. For instance, here is a docker compose I found one the audio bookshelf website:
version: "3.7"
services:
audiobookshelf:
image: ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf:latest
ports: - 13378:80
volumes:
- :/audiobooks
- :/podcasts - :/config
- :/metadata
I strongly suggest that you install portainer if this is your first time playing with docker.
It'll make your life and learning curve dramatically easier.
I'm not suggesting you dont learn how to do it all over CLI (I actually think CLI is way easier and faster to deploy once you get the hang of it), but if you're looking to deploy something right away, I believe portainer is your best bet.
TBH I've been using Linux for over a decade, can install & set up Arch from scratch etc. and I still don't understand Docker.
Docker's hard. I never really got my head around it. I used "Swizzin Community Edition" to setup my media server. It was really easy compared to Docker-based solutions.
I don't mean to be that guy but like did you even read a basic tutorial? Or did it install and the docker commands aren't working still?
I have been in and out of Linux for years and Docker is just... Hard. There's a thing called portainer, and it makes it so you can muck with Docker from a web browser, and that is literally all I know at this point. Still, might be helpful? I have some Docker stuff, and it works the way I assume my mom thinks Linux works. Someone typed fast and magic happened. Best of luck!
Docker is a pain in the dick
Only for people that dont understand the basics
Ok, so I don't know the specifics, this might not be entirely accurate, but this is a general step-by-step guide for Debian based distros like Mint.
Install docker
The first thing you need to do is install docker, this can be done via whatever GUI you use for a package manager or via the terminal using sudo apt install docker
(I'm not sure docker is the name of the package, I'm just guessing, you can do an apt search docker
to see what's available)
Add yourself to dockers
This is likely not needed on Mint, but just in case your user should be in the docker group, i.e. run sudo gpasswd -a docker
. I'm almost sure Mint does this by default.
Enable docker systemd
This also might not be needed, again I'm almost sure Mint does this for you when you install docker, but just in case the command is sudo systemctl enable docker
Reboot
Because there have been changes to your user groups you need to relogin, easier to reboot.
use docker
Now you have a system with docker, you can test this by running the following command docker run hello-world
, if you see a bunch of text that contains "Hello from docker" docker is working.
setup a docker-compose file
Create a folder, and in that folder create a text file called docker-compose.yaml
in that file. This file will tell docker what you want to run, for example to have Nextcloud (which is an awesome self-hosted drive alternative. I'm not going to teach you the specific services you want, you can figure those out by looking at their page on the linuxserver page or something) you can look here https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/nextcloud on how to write your docker-compose file, for example you could write:
services:
nextcloud:
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/nextcloud:latest
container_name: nextcloud
environment:
- PUID=1000
- PGID=1000
- TZ=Etc/UTC
volumes:
- ./config:/config
- ./data:/data
ports:
- 8080:80
- 443:443
restart: unless-stopped
Then open a terminal on that folder and run docker compose up -d
after that is done open a browser and go to http://localhost:8080
and begin using Nextcloud.
Is there a Linux for people who are deeply entrenched in how Windows works
How Windows works is different I think?
I’m not above googling command lines that I can copy and paste but I’ve spent HOURS trying to figure this out and have gotten no where…
You don't need.
I heard you are using a debian-based distro, can you read the man pages for apt?
Then use apt to find docker, and get it.
Once it’s installed in the terminal, how the hell do I find docker so I can start playing with it?
It is not installed in the terminal. It is installed on the system, ON DISK!
docker should be installed on /usr/bin. It is on PATH. Type docker and see what happen. If not, try searching on /usr/bin (on BSDs third party software are separated from base, so docker should be installed on /usr/local/bin)
And the docker service should be started, if not. Use the fucking systemctl to start it. The service name should be docker, if I recall correctly