Setting up Docker
TL;DR
In this article, we will:
- Get familiar with the Cockpit web interface
- Install Docker, and some Quality of Life programs
- Get a Web Server Up and Running
Loading Cockpit
At this stage, you should be able to navigate to your cockpit web interface by visiting https://(your-ip):9090. We are using the root account with the password you set.
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if you are using Fedora Workstation, you may need to install cockpit first through the software store and enable the service. Cockpit provides a web interface for administrating your server.
Once you log in, you should be presented with a dashboard! We love dashboards.
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In a production environment, you typically do not use a root (superadmin) account. You typically don’t use local authentication at all, instead authenticating with a centralized user system. However, in a single user environment the user delegation doesn’t make a large difference and we will stick to administration with root.
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From the above, you might be able to surmise this is a hyper-v VM.
Navigate to software updates and update your software. Always a good idea when working with a fresh install. Also enable automatic software updates if you’re feeling adventerous. Reboot afterwards.
Installing Pre-Requisites and Quality-of-Life Programs
Once rebooted, let’s navigate to the terminal section in cockpit. Let’s install some software! You can install Docker (well, technically docker’s upstream moby), Docker-Compose, Micro, and Midnight Commander with the following:
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You can paste in the cockpit terminal with control+shift+v
Let’s also set up micro for our default text editor. Paste the following in the terminal to set our profile defaults
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micro is a command-line based text editor that supports modern editor features, similar to VSCode or Notepad++. Micro also uses sane keyboard shortcuts (such as control+c to copy or control+q to quit). You can even use the mouse inside the console! Midnight commander is a command line based file explorer, also with mouse support (launched with mc).
#!/bin/bash
#create the config folder for the micro text editor
mkdir -p ~/.config/micro
#set default tabs to use spaces instead, and use 2 spaces instead of 4
echo '{"tabstospaces": true, "tabsize": 2, "clipboard": "internal"}' > ~/.config/micro/settings.json
#set micro to be the default editor on login, and also in the current session
echo 'export EDITOR=micro' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export MC_SKIN=nicedark' >> ~/.bashrc
export EDITOR=micro
export MC_SKIN=nicedark
Hello World with Docker
Alrighty, we are now in a position to run our first docker program! The easiest container to run out of the box is a static webserver like nginx or caddy. Let’s run a server now.
Navigate to http://(your-ip) and you should have a running webserver!
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docker is running this container inside the terminal we have open in cockpit. This is referred to as running a program in the foreground. You can exit out of the server (closing it in the process) with control+c
Moving on
We have a basic docker installation up and running. We’re not going to go into how to use docker completely: there are lots of tutorials on everything docker can do. Instead, we will jump right into the first several problems to solve:
- How do we use persistent storage and Infrastructure as Code
- How do we manage our deployment environment
- What should we do to encrypt our services
- How do we authenticate and protect our services
- How do we back up our persistent storage in an atomic matter
Let’s start on that now with Designing our Workspace