docs/engine/installation/binaries.md

description	keywords	title
Instructions for installing Docker as a binary. Mostly meant for hackers who want to try out Docker on a variety of environments.	binaries, installation, docker, documentation, linux	Install Docker from binaries

This instruction set is meant for hackers who want to try out Docker on a variety of environments.

Before following these directions, you should really check if a packaged version of Docker is already available for your distribution. We have packages for many distributions, and more keep showing up all the time!

Check runtime dependencies

To run properly, docker needs the following software to be installed at runtime:

• iptables version 1.4 or later
• Git version 1.7 or later
• procps (or similar provider of a "ps" executable)
• XZ Utils 4.9 or later
• a properly mounted cgroupfs hierarchy (having a single, all-encompassing "cgroup" mount point is not sufficient)

Check kernel dependencies

Docker in daemon mode has specific kernel requirements. For details, check your distribution in Installation.

A 3.10 Linux kernel is the minimum requirement for Docker. Kernels older than 3.10 lack some of the features required to run Docker containers. These older versions are known to have bugs which cause data loss and frequently panic under certain conditions.

The latest minor version (3.x.y) of the 3.10 (or a newer maintained version) Linux kernel is recommended. Keeping the kernel up to date with the latest minor version will ensure critical kernel bugs get fixed.

Warning: Installing custom kernels and kernel packages is probably not supported by your Linux distribution's vendor. Please make sure to ask your vendor about Docker support first before attempting to install custom kernels on your distribution.

Warning: Installing a newer kernel might not be enough for some distributions which provide packages which are too old or incompatible with newer kernels.

Note that Docker also has a client mode, which can run on virtually any Linux kernel (it even builds on macOS!).

Enable AppArmor and SELinux when possible

Please use AppArmor or SELinux if your Linux distribution supports either of the two. This helps improve security and blocks certain types of exploits. Your distribution's documentation should provide detailed steps on how to enable the recommended security mechanism.

Some Linux distributions enable AppArmor or SELinux by default and they run a kernel which doesn't meet the minimum requirements (3.10 or newer). Updating the kernel to 3.10 or newer on such a system might not be enough to start Docker and run containers. Incompatibilities between the version of AppArmor/SELinux user space utilities provided by the system and the kernel could prevent Docker from running, from starting containers or, cause containers to exhibit unexpected behaviour.

Warning: If either of the security mechanisms is enabled, it should not be disabled to make Docker or its containers run. This will reduce security in that environment, lose support from the distribution's vendor for the system, and might break regulations and security policies in heavily regulated environments.

Get the Docker Engine binaries

You can download either the latest release binaries or a specific version. View the docker/docker Releases page.

A group of download links is included at the bottom of the release notes for each version of Docker. You can use these links to download the source code archive for that release, binaries for supported platforms, and static binaries for unsupported Linux platforms. Use the links listed in the Downloads section to download the appropriate binaries.

Limitations of Windows and macOS binaries

For Windows, the i386 download contains a 32-bit client-only binary. The x86_64 download contains both client and daemon binaries for 64-bit Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 systems.

The macOS binary only contains a client. You cannot use it to run the dockerd daemon. If you need to run the daemon, install Docker for Mac instead.

URL patterns for static binaries

The URLs for released binaries are stable and follow a predictable pattern. Unfortunately, it is not possible to browse the releases in a directory structure. If you do not want to get the links from the release notes for a release, you can infer the URL for the binaries by using the following patterns:

Description	URL pattern
Latest Linux 64-bit	https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/x86_64/docker-latest.tgz
Latest Linux 32-bit	https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/i386/docker-latest.tgz
Specific version Linux 64-bit	https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/x86_64/docker-<version>.tgz
Specific version Linux 32-bit	https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/i386/docker-<version>.tgz
Latest Windows 64-bit	https://get.docker.com/builds/Windows/x86_64/docker-latest.zip
Latest Windows 32-bit	https://get.docker.com/builds/Windows/i386/docker-latest.zip
Specific version Windows 64-bit	https://get.docker.com/builds/Windows/x86_64/docker-<version>.zip
Specific version Windows 32-bit	https://get.docker.com/builds/Windows/i386/docker-<version>.zip
Latest MacOS 64-bit	https://get.docker.com/builds/Darwin/x86_64/docker-latest.tgz
Specific version MacOS 64-bit	https://get.docker.com/builds/Darwin/x86_64/docker-<version>.tgz

For example, the stable URL for the Docker 1.11.0 64-bit static binary for Linux is https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/x86_64/docker-1.11.0.tgz.

Note These instructions are for Docker Engine 1.11 and up. Engine 1.10 and under consists of a single binary, and instructions for those versions are different. To install version 1.10 or below, follow the instructions in the 1.10 documentation{: target="blank" class="" }.

To verify the integrity of downloaded files, you can get an MD5 or SHA256 checksum by adding .md5 or .sha256 to the end of the URL. For instance, to verify the docker-1.11.0.tgz link above, use the URL https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/x86_64/docker-1.11.0.tgz.md5 or https://get.docker.com/builds/Linux/x86_64/docker-1.11.0.tgz.sha256.

Install the Linux binaries

After downloading, you extract the archive, which puts the binaries in a directory named docker in your current location.

$ tar -xvzf docker-latest.tgz

docker/
docker/docker
docker/docker-containerd
docker/docker-containerd-ctr
docker/docker-containerd-shim
docker/docker-proxy
docker/docker-runc
docker/dockerd

Engine requires these binaries to be installed in your host's $PATH. For example, to install the binaries in /usr/bin:

$ mv docker/* /usr/bin/

Note: Depending on your current setup, you can specify custom paths for some of the binaries provided.

Note: If you already have Engine installed on your host, make sure you stop Engine before installing (killall docker), and install the binaries in the same location. You can find the location of the current installation with dirname $(which docker).

Run the Engine daemon on Linux

You can manually start the Engine in daemon mode using:

$ sudo dockerd &

The GitHub repository provides samples of init-scripts you can use to control the daemon through a process manager, such as upstart or systemd. You can find these scripts in the contrib directory.

For additional information about running the Engine in daemon mode, refer to the daemon command in the Engine command line reference.

Install the macOS binaries

You can extract the downloaded archive either by double-clicking the downloaded .tgz or on the command line, using tar -xvzf docker-1.11.0.tgz. You can run the client binary from any location on your filesystem.

Install the Windows binary

You can extract the downloaded archive by double-clicking the downloaded .zip. You can run the client binary from any location on your filesystem.

Run client commands without root access

On Linux, the dockerd daemon always runs as the root user and binds to a Unix socket instead of a TCP port. By default that Unix socket is owned by the root user. This means that by default, you need to use sudo to run docker commands.

If you (or your Docker installer) create a Unix group called docker and add users to it, the dockerd daemon will change the ownership of the Unix socket to be readable and writable by members of the docker group when the daemon starts. The dockerd daemon must always run as the root user, but you can run docker client commands, such as docker run, as a non-privileged user.

Warning: Membership in the docker group (or the group specified with -G) is equivalent to root access. See Docker Daemon Attack Surface details.

Upgrade Docker Engine

Before you upgrade your manual installation of Docker Engine on Linux, first stop the docker daemon:

$ killall dockerd

After the Docker daemon stops, move the old binaries out of the way and follow the regular installation steps.

Next steps

Continue with the User Guide.