Install Docker CE on Fedora Atomic Host (if that’s what you’re into)

November 8th, 2017

Fedora Atomic Host comes bundled with a version of Docker based on this project atomic repo that moves no faster than the upstream Kubernetes project can abide (currently docker-1.13.1). This means that Fedora Atomic pretty much always ships with an older version of docker than what’s available from Docker Inc.

However, through the magic of rpm-ostree package layering, you can replace that older, baked-in docker with the very latest docker-ce. Here’s how:

First, grab the repo file for docker-ce.

# cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
# curl -O https://download.docker.com/linux/fedora/docker-ce.repo

Then create a config file to tell docker-ce to use overlay2 storage.

# vi /etc/docker/daemon.json

{
  "storage-driver": "overlay2"
}

Then, use rpm-ostree override to remove docker and kubernetes from the image, and use rpm-ostree install to layer on docker-ce from the configured repo.

# rpm-ostree override remove docker docker-common kubernetes kubernetes-node cockpit-docker
# rpm-ostree install docker-ce -r

After the reboot, you’ll have the latest docker-ce installed. Knock yourself out with any number of bleeding-edge features!

# docker info
Containers: 0
 Running: 0
 Paused: 0
 Stopped: 0
Images: 0
Server Version: 17.09.0-ce
Storage Driver: overlay2
...

November 8, 2017

Jason Brooks

post

docker

3 responses to “Install Docker CE on Fedora Atomic Host (if that’s what you’re into)”

Steve says:

November 29, 2017 at 13:29

A newer version of docker on Fedora Atomic Host is indeed “what I am into” and this short guide was very helpful and made it easy. Thank you!

In case it’s useful to anyone else, I found that when following these steps on a newly installed Fedora Atomic Host (installed from Fedora-Atomic-ostree-x86_64-27-20171110.1.iso) I needed to modify a couple of Jason’s steps.

After downloading docker-ce.repo with the curl command, I edited it and replaced all instances of $releasever with a hardcoded “26”. That’s because the docker-ce repo for Fedora Atomic doesn’t have a 27 release yet, so following the steps with an unedited docker-ce.repo file results in 404 errors.
Because the Fedora Atomic Host I installed doesn’t have kubernetes bundled with it, and I hadn’t installed it yet, I had to make an obvious change to the command Jason used to remove old packages. Instead of this:
rpm-ostree ex override remove docker docker-common kubernetes kubernetes-node cockpit-docker
I did this:
rpm-ostree ex override remove docker docker-common cockpit-docker

Everything else worked fine as is. Thanks so much for these steps, Jason!

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- Jason Brooks says:
  
  December 6, 2017 at 09:39
  
  Thanks! I actually just hit this same issue, w/ $releasever, trying out docker-ce in a system container (https://github.com/projectatomic/atomic-system-containers/tree/master/docker-fedora), and your comment helped me. :)
  
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Pedro Alvarez says:

June 9, 2021 at 09:10
This still works today although I had to start and enable the service:
```
# systemctl start docker
# systemctl enable docker
```
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