Install Docker For Mac

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  1. Install Docker For Mac Pro
  2. Docker On Windows 10
  3. Install Docker Toolbox For Mac
  4. Install Docker For Mac Pro
  5. Install Docker For Mac Pc
  6. Install Docker For Mac Windows 10

Install Docker Toolbox on macOS. Legacy desktop solution. Docker Toolbox is for older Mac and Windows systems that do not meet the requirements of Docker Desktop for Mac and Docker Desktop for Windows.We recommend updating to the newer applications, if possible. Get started with Docker Desktop for Mac Estimated reading time: 17 minutes Welcome to Docker Desktop! The Docker Desktop for Mac section contains information about the Docker Desktop Community Stable release. For information about features available in Edge releases, see the Edge release notes.For information about Docker Desktop Enterprise (DDE) releases, see Docker Desktop.

“But it works on my machine!”

That is an excuse too often overheard in conversations between developers and operations teams. Even with sophisticated tooling, virtually unlimited computing capacity in the cloud, and advanced continuous integration workflows, the differences between developing applications locally and running them in production remains a persistent source of bugs and other problems. Dev and ops teams often turn to virtual machines, pre-built images, and/or configuration management systems like Puppet and Chef to achieve better parity with Linux-based production environments and Mac or Windows development environments.

All those approaches can help, but the problems can still persist. Fortunately, the new Docker for Mac beta offers an opportunity to create a more resilient local environment that better mirrors production. MacOS and Windows have traditionally not supported the Linux-based container technology that powers Docker, but the latest release of Docker for Mac and Windows now makes it easier to get started creating and running containers in those environments with less overhead. Let’s put a simple Node.js application in a Docker container as an example.

Less fragile developer environments with Docker containers

Developer workstations are fragile. Upgrading the operating system, botched package installs, conflicting dependencies, and the need to use multiple programming language runtimes remains a persistent source of frustration for developers. Many language-specific tools have been built to manage this complexity, including virtualenv for Python, rbenv for Ruby, and jenv for Java. Docker, however, presents an elegant new alternative.

Containers, like virtual machines, offer a way to isolate the complex dependencies applications require from the host operating system and other applications. Unlike VMs, containers are less resource intensive and usually take only seconds to start.

Docker became a developer darling by combining Linux container technology with a specialized file system and command-line interface that also runs on Mac and Windows with the help of a Linux virtual machine. The additional requirements needed to run Docker on non-Linux environments have been simplified in the latest beta release of Docker’s software, making it easier to work with.

Once installed, Docker images, often available for popular open-source projects from the Docker Hub, are used to instantiate running containers that execute application code. (Understanding the difference between a container and image is particularly important—more information is available on the official Docker tutorial.)

Getting started with the Docker for Mac beta

The new Docker for Mac beta software has an easy-to-use installer that dropped certain dependencies—VirtualBox, most notably—in favor of a lightweight Linux virtual machine using a macOS-native virtualization solution.

The new Docker beta has a toolbar helper for Mac OS X

After installing the new version of the Docker client for Mac, it’s possible to immediately start pulling the images that will create a container. This can be done using the command line or the Kitematic GUI interface (a separate download that works with the Mac beta).

Using the official Docker image for the latest stable version of Node.js, here is a one-line command that runs some JavaScript code using new EcmaScript 6 features in a container named “test-node”:

The output of this command is “Hi from Docker running on linux” because the Node.js 6.2 image is based on Debian Linux and, from the perspective of the Node.js process, it’s running on Linux. All the system dependencies required to run Node.js 6.2 are isolated inside of the container image.

Handling application dependencies with Docker

While running one-line scripts is useful in limited cases, most applications have many external dependencies. Using commands specified in a Dockerfile, it’s possible to create a Docker image for a typical Node.js application that requires modules using the node package manager (npm). This Dockerfile example also creates a special non-root user to run the app since, by default, Docker containers execute commands as the root user:

Install Docker For Mac Pro

Using this Dockerfile you can build an image for a Node.js application that starts from an index.js file—in this example we’ll create a simple HTTP server that outputs ASCII cows using an npm module. Following standard conventions, we namespace the image with a username or organization name, the name of the image, and the version of the application, and run the docker build command in the root of the Node.js project directory:

Once the image is successfully built, we can run the container in the root directory of the project. Several command-line options are needed that tell Docker to run the image as a daemon, map port 3000 to the host operating system’s port 3000, mount directories that exist on the host (the actual application code) inside the container, and give it a friendly name, “cow-service”:

If the container is successfully running (a quick docker ps can verify this), an HTTP request to localhost:3000 will output a cow:

Using Docker for Mac and the official Node.js image, a simple Node.js web service is now running in a container. If changes are made to the application code, restarting the container by providing the name, docker restart cow-service, will pick them up. According to a recent post by Dave Kerr, if you’re using code watching tools like nodemon, the new Docker for Mac software will now correctly pick up changes. However, if npm dependencies change, you will need to rebuild the image using the docker build command given the structure of this Dockerfile.

With Kitematic, restarting and viewing the logs and volumes can be managed in a graphical interface:

The path to Docker containers in production

At this point, it’s reasonable to wonder if the additional complexity of installing Docker, defining a Dockerfile, and running a series of commands to build an image and run a container is worth it for such a simple application. The key is that all of the dependencies needed to run Node.js—the correct version of Node.js, npm dependencies, and npm itself—are completely isolated from the host operating system and packaged into a read-only image.

That means after going through this process, the app is wrapped in a container image that is a static, versioned artifact. It can be shared with other team members, used in continuous integration environments to run tests, and eventually deployed to a production environment. Notably, running the Node.js application inside a container didn’t require any code changes to the app or to macOS itself—the only file that was created in the root of the application directory was a Dockerfile.

Docker is increasingly useful for a variety of developer workflows, even when Docker isn’t running in production. As you use Docker to create less fragile development and production environments that support faster changes and more frequent deployments, you’ll want to check out New Relic APM, which is built to help software teams understand how changes affect app performance and reliability.

You can learn more about New Relic’s own multi-year experience running and monitoring Docker applications in production in From Zero to Docker: Migrating to the Whale,How New Relic Used Docker to Solve Thorny Deployment Issues, and How Containers Helped New Relic to Scale [Webinar]. And you can find out more about New Relic’s Docker monitoring capabilities here.

Docker On Windows 10

Additional Resources

Install

Senior Technical Marketing Engineer Adam Larson contributed to this post with invaluable suggestions and technical feedback.

Container image courtesy of Shutterstock.com.

Install Docker Toolbox For Mac

This is a step-by-step guide to installing and running Kubernetes on your Mac so that you can develop applications locally.

You will be guided through running and accessing a Kubernetes cluster on your local machine using the following tools:

  • Homebrew
  • Docker for Mac
  • Minikube
  • virtualbox
  • kubectl

Install Docker For Mac Pro

Installation Guide

The only pre-requisite for this guide is that you have Homebrew installed. Homebrew is a package manager for the Mac. You’ll also need Homebrew Cask, which you can install after Homebrew by running brew tap caskroom/cask in your Terminal.

  1. Install Docker for Mac. Docker is used to create, manage, and run our containers. It lets us construct containers that will run in Kubernetes Pods.

  2. Install VirtualBox for Mac using Homebrew. Run brew cask install virtualbox in your Terminal. VirtualBox lets you run virtual machines on your Mac (like running Windows inside macOS, except for a Kubernetes cluster.)

    Skip to step three if everything has worked to this point.

    In my case, I already had the non-Homebrew VirtualBox app installed which caused issues when trying to start minikube.

    If you already have VirtualBox installed, start the installation as before with brew cask install virtualbox. You will get a warning that confirms this saying Warning: Cask 'virtualbox' is already installed.. Once this is confirmed, you can reinstall VirtualBox with Homebrew by running brew cask reinstall virtualbox.

    If you happen to have VirtualBox already running when you do this, you could see an error saying Failed to unload org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv - (libkern/kext) kext is in use or retained (cannot unload).

    This is because the kernel extensions that VirtualBox uses were in use when the uninstall occurred. If you scroll up in the output of that command, beneath Warning! Found the following active VirtualBox processes: you’ll see a list of the processes that need to be killed.

    Kill each of these in turn by running kill first_column_number (first_column_number is the process identifier for that process).

    Now re-run brew cask reinstall virtualbox and it should succeed.

  3. Install kubectl for Mac. This is the command-line interface that lets you interact with Kuberentes. Run brew install kubectl in your Terminal.

  4. Install Minikube via the Installation > OSX instructions from the latest release. At the time of writing, this meant running the following command in Terminal…

    Minikube will run a Kubernetes cluster with a single node.

  5. Everything should work! Start your Minikube cluster with minikube start. Then run kubectl api-versions. If you see a list of versions, everything’s working! minikube start might take a few minutes.

    6. At this point, I got an error saying Error starting host: Error getting state for host: machine does not exist. because I had previously tried to run Minikube. You can fix this by running open ~/.minikube/ to open Minikube’s data files, and then deleting and deleting the machines directory. Then run minikube start again.

Come Together

Install Docker For Mac Pc

You’ve installed all these tools and everything looks like it’s working. A quick explanation of how the components relate is needed.

Install Docker For Mac Windows 10

  • VirtualBox is a generic tool for running virtual machines. You can use it to run Ubuntu, Windows, etc. inside your macOS operating system host.
  • Minikube is a Kubernetes-specific package that runs a Kubernetes cluster on your machine. That cluster has a single node and has some unique features that make it more suitable for local development. Minikube tells VirtualBox to run. Minikube can use other virtualization tools—not just VirtualBox—however these require extra configuration.
  • kubectl is the command line application that lets you interact with your Minikube Kubernetes cluster. It sends request to the Kubernetes API server running on the cluser to manage your Kubernetes environment. kubectl is like any other application that runs on your Mac—it just makes HTTP requests to the Kubernetes API on the cluster.