To be clear, currently Docker containers do not run on Windows. Microsoft is working with Docker to release something with feature parity but we will be lucky if we see that in 2015 (Blogged by Scott Gu). So although there is a client for Windows for managing Docker containers, we will need an Ubuntu install. Installing Ubuntu on Hyper-V
Installing Docker
Most of this is straight from the Docker documentation but I ran into a few problems that I think may be due to this running on Hyper-V. Also I wanted a quick reference in the future.
First lets update our package repositories:
sudo apt-get update
Currently the Docker docs mention pulling from their private repos to get the latest version but that was for Ubuntu 14.04. I noticed Ubuntu 14.10 repos contain Docker 1.2 which is at time of writing good enough for me.
So lets install Docker:
sudo apt-get install docker.io
Then so we get bash completion we can type:
source /etc/bash_completion.d/docker.io
No sudo needed. Alternatively just reboot with:
sudo reboot
Lets test our Docker install:
sudo docker version
sudo docker info
This displays version number of the components and some basic info on the install respectively.
The info will contain a line WARNING: No swap limit support so lets fix that.
sudo nano /etc/default/grub
Find the line GRUB___CMDLINE___LINUX and edit it:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="cgroup_enable=memory swapaccount=1" then save and exit nano.
We need to update Grub and reboot.
sudo update-grub
sudo reboot
Now running sudo docker info you will see the warning is gone.
If we try download and run a docker image we are still not there yet but lets try:
sudo docker run -i -t ubuntu /bin/bash
Troubleshooting
Unexpected EOF
This actually happens every now and again with Docker (I think if latency is bad) so just try run the command again and it will likely work.
dial tcp: lookup registery-1.docker.io: no such host
The documentation explains how to add a dns to the docker options in /etc/default/docker but this actually didn't work for me on the Hyper-V. I had to edit /etc/resolv.conf and add the google nameserver there (doesn't have to be google).
sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf
Then add nameserver 8.8.8.8 on a new line. Save and exit.
You might need to sudo reboot.
Finally lets run something
So now we should be ready to go. Run
sudo docker run -i -t ubuntu /bin/bash again.
This should now pull down the ubuntu image and start up a container running ubuntu (yes we are running Ubuntu in a kernal process on another Ubuntu - inception right?).
The -t is to assign a terminal and -i is so the connection is interactive.
Once it is running a terminal prompt will be available. Type echo 'Hi'. The Ubuntu container willl say hi back :)
So thats it. You have Docker running on a Hyper-V guest.