Install Docker, Docker-machine and docker-compose on Debian 9

Docker is a free and open-source containerization software that helps to deploy, run applications in a container. The containers are similar to a virtual machine but consume fewer resource, easy to manage and can run anywhere regardless of operating environment it is running in.

Docker uses cgroups and namespace to allow the independent containers to run within a single Linux instance.

This guide will help you installing Docker on Debian 9 Stretch. This guide should also work on the previous version, i.e., Debian 8 (Jessie)

Note: Docker needs a 64-bit version of Debian OS and Kernel version should be at least 3.10.

Table of contents

1. Setup Docker Repository
2. Prepare Docker Repository
3. Update apt database
4. Install Docker
5. Install docker machine
6. Install docker compose

Setup Docker Repository

Before start the installation, please ensure you have root access right of Debian system. If still have no Debian system, you can install debian 9 stretch at the beginning

1. Login Debian server as root
2. Execute below to commands to install necessary packages first

apt-get update
apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates software-properties-common curl

Prepare Docker Repository

Add the GPG key for Docker repository on your system.

wget https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg 
apt-key add gpg

Add the official Docker repository to the system by running below command in the terminal

echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian $(lsb_release -cs) stable" |  tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list

Update apt database

apt-get update

Make sure you are installing Docker from the official repository, not from the default Debian repository.

Install Docker

1. Install Docker using the apt-get command
   apt-get -y install docker-ce

Wait for the installation finish

Verify Docker Installation

Type docker version in the terminal, you can see something like below

Client:
 Version:       17.12.0-ce
 API version:   1.35
 Go version:    go1.9.2
 Git commit:    c97c6d6
 Built: Wed Dec 27 20:11:19 2017
 OS/Arch:       linux/amd64

Server:
 Engine:
  Version:      17.12.0-ce
  API version:  1.35 (minimum version 1.12)
  Go version:   go1.9.2
  Git commit:   c97c6d6
  Built:        Wed Dec 27 20:09:54 2017
  OS/Arch:      linux/amd64
  Experimental: false

Install docker machine

curl -L https://github.com/docker/machine/releases/download/v0.13.0/docker-machine-`uname -s`-`uname -m` >/tmp/docker-machine &&
chmod +x /tmp/docker-machine && cp /tmp/docker-machine /usr/local/bin/docker-machine

Verify docker machine by typing "docker-machine"

docker-machine version 0.13.0, build 9ba6da9

Install docker compose

curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.18.0/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Verify docker compose by typing "docker-compose version"

docker-compose version 1.18.0, build 8dd22a9
docker-py version: 2.6.1
CPython version: 2.7.13
OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.0.1t 3 May 2016