moby/docs/sources/installation/debian.md

page_title: Installation on Debian page_description: Instructions for installing Docker on Debian page_keywords: Docker, Docker documentation, installation, debian

Debian

Note

Docker is still under heavy development! We don't recommend using it in production yet, but we're getting closer with each release. Please see our blog post, Getting to Docker 1.0

Docker is supported on the following versions of Debian:

• Debian 8.0 Jessie (64-bit)

Debian Jessie 8.0 (64-bit)

Debian 8 comes with a 3.14.0 Linux kernel, and a docker.io package which installs all its prerequisites from Debian's repository.

Note

Debian contains a much older KDE3/GNOME2 package called docker, so the package and the executable are called docker.io.

Installation

To install the latest Debian package (may not be the latest Docker release):

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install docker.io
$ sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/docker.io /usr/local/bin/docker

To verify that everything has worked as expected:

$ sudo docker run -i -t ubuntu /bin/bash

Which should download the ubuntu image, and then start bash in a container.

Note

If you want to enable memory and swap accounting see this.

Giving non-root access

The docker daemon always runs as the root user, and since Docker version 0.5.2, the docker daemon binds to a Unix socket instead of a TCP port. By default that Unix socket is owned by the user root, and so, by default, you can access it with sudo.

Starting in version 0.5.3, if you (or your Docker installer) create a Unix group called docker and add users to it, then the docker daemon will make the ownership of the Unix socket read/writable by the docker group when the daemon starts. The docker daemon must always run as the root user, but if you run the docker client as a user in the docker group then you don't need to add sudo to all the client commands. From Docker 0.9.0 you can use the -G flag to specify an alternative group.

Warning

The docker group (or the group specified with the -G flag) is root-equivalent; see Docker Daemon Attack Surface details.

Example:

# Add the docker group if it doesn't already exist.
$ sudo groupadd docker

# Add the connected user "${USER}" to the docker group.
# Change the user name to match your preferred user.
# You may have to logout and log back in again for
# this to take effect.
$ sudo gpasswd -a ${USER} docker

# Restart the Docker daemon.
$ sudo service docker restart