Install Docker Engine on RHEL

To get started with Docker Engine on RHEL, make sure you meet the prerequisites, then install Docker.

Prerequisites

Note

We currently only provide packages for RHEL on s390x (IBM Z). Other architectures are not yet supported for RHEL, but you may be able to install the CentOS packages on RHEL. Refer to the Install Docker Engine on CentOS page for details.

OS requirements

To install Docker Engine, you need a maintained version of RHEL 7 or 8 on s390x (IBM Z). Archived versions aren’t supported or tested.

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. Also uninstall Podman and the associated dependencies if installed already.

$ sudo yum remove docker \
                  docker-client \
                  docker-client-latest \
                  docker-common \
                  docker-latest \
                  docker-latest-logrotate \
                  docker-logrotate \
                  docker-engine \
                  podman \
                  runc

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 repository.

$ sudo yum install -y yum-utils

$ sudo yum-config-manager \
    --add-repo \
    https://download.docker.com/linux/rhel/docker-ce.repo

Install Docker Engine

1. Install the latest version of Docker Engine, containerd, and Docker Compose or go to the next step to install a specific version:

   $ sudo yum install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin
   

   If prompted to accept the GPG key, verify that the fingerprint matches 060A 61C5 1B55 8A7F 742B 77AA C52F EB6B 621E 9F35, and if so, accept it.

   This command installs Docker, but it doesn’t start Docker. It also creates a docker group, however, it doesn’t add any users to the group by default.

2. 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.s390x                3:20.10.8-3.el8                 docker-ce-stable
   docker-ce.s390x                3:20.10.7-3.el8                 docker-ce-stable
   <...>
   

   The list returned depends on which repositories are enabled, and is specific to your version of RHEL (indicated by the .el8 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-20.10.7.

   $ sudo yum install docker-ce-<VERSION_STRING> docker-ce-cli-<VERSION_STRING> containerd.io docker-compose-plugin
   

   This command installs Docker, but it doesn’t start Docker. It also creates a docker group, however, it doesn’t add any users to the group by default.

3. Start Docker.

   $ sudo systemctl start docker
   

4. 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.

1. Go to https://download.docker.com/linux/rhel/ and choose your version of RHEL. Then browse to s390x/stable/Packages/ and download the .rpm file for the Docker version you want to install.

2. 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. The docker group is created, but no users are added to the group.

3. Start Docker.

   $ sudo systemctl start docker
   

4. 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 or sudo 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 or sudo 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 without root 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

1. Uninstall the Docker Engine, CLI, Containerd, and Docker Compose packages:

   $ sudo yum remove docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin
   

2. 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.

Next steps

• Continue to Post-installation steps for Linux.
• Review the topics in Develop with Docker to learn how to build new applications using Docker.

requirements, apt, installation, rhel, rpm, install, uninstall, upgrade, update, s390x, ibm-z