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09 November 2013 / Last updated: 25 Mar 2019

Docker on Raspberry Pi

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Deprecated: We've since released balena.io as a full service allowing you to easily run and update docker containers on multiple architectures. See https://balena.io/ for more details.

At balena.io, our goal is to simplify development for the Internet of Things. One challenge we’ve faced is deploying applications to devices. It’s okay when you have just one or two devices, but once a deployment scales larger, this becomes a major issue.

In July we discovered Docker, a tool that vastly simplifies the deployment of applications across variety of environments. However Docker didn’t yet support or run on the Raspberry Pi.

We wanted to change that.

Ken Cochrane had made some progress on this. As of the 21st of October, we decided to allocate our full resources to completing the task. By the 2nd of November, we reported back to the community that we were almost there.

Today, November 10th, we’ve made a break-through: Docker is fully running on the Raspberry Pi.

Installing Docker on the Raspberry Pi

We originally performed these steps on Arch Linux x86_64 Linux 3.10.3 with an 8GB SD card. Over the next week, we'll be verifying and updating these instructions to support running them on a Mac.

Setup:

export RPIDIR=$HOME/rpi

mkdir -p $RPIDIR && cd $RPIDIR

Download needed files

wget https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/arch/images/archlinux-hf-2013-07-22/archlinux-hf-2013-07-22.img.zip

unzip archlinux-hf-2013-07-22.img.zip

curl https://codeload.github.com/raspberrypi/linux/tar.gz/rpi-3.11.y | tar xz

curl https://codeload.github.com/raspberrypi/tools/tar.gz/master | tar xz

cd $RPIDIR/linux-rpi-3.11.y

git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/aufs/aufs3-standalone

Install Arch Linux on SD card

Insert an SD card into your system

sudo dd if=$RPIDIR/archlinux-hf-2013-07-22.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4m

Eject the SD card

SSH Into the Raspberry Pi

Put the SD card in the Raspberry Pi, boot it and connect over SSH (root/root)

Resize the Root Partition

Follow this guide to resizing the Root Partition whilst the Raspberry Pi is running.

Update the install:

pacman -Syu # (answer yes to everything)

pacman -S linux-raspberrypi-latest # (answer yes to everything)

Create a swap file

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=1024

chmod 600 /swapfile

mkswap /swapfile

echo /swapfile none swap defaults 0 0 >> /etc/fstab

reboot

Install a new kernel on the RPi.

Run the following on the host system

Setup environment
export RPIDIR=$HOME/rpi
mkdir -p $RPIDIR/root/boot
mkdir -p $RPIDIR/root/usr
export INSTALL_MOD_PATH=$RPIDIR/root/usr
export KERNEL_SRC=$RPIDIR/linux-rpi-3.11.y
export CCPREFIX=$RPIDIR/tools-master/arm-bcm2708/arm-bcm2708-linux-gnueabi/bin/arm-bcm2708-linux-gnueabi-
export CROSS_COMPILE=$CCPREFIX
export ARCH=arm
Patch kernel with AUFS
cd $KERNEL_SRC/aufs3-standalone
git checkout aufs3.11
cp -rp *.patch ../
cp -rp fs ../
cp -rp Documentation/ ../
cp -rp include/ ../
cd $KERNEL_SRC
patch -p1 < aufs3-kbuild.patch (ignore the error)
patch -p1 < aufs3-base.patch
patch -p1 < aufs3-mmap.patch
patch -p1 < aufs3-loopback.patch
patch -p1 < aufs3-standalone.patch
Configure the kernel
make mrproper
ssh root@192.168.1.2 cat /proc/config.gz | gunzip > .config (replace the IP with the IP of your Pi)
make oldconfig
1. Choose yes for Aufs
2. Press enter for all other options
make menuconfig
Choose the following options to be built-in (i.e with an asterisk):

Device Drivers → Character Devices → Support multiple instances of devpts
Device Drivers → Network Device Support → Virtual ethernet pair device
Device Drivers → Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM) → Thin provisioning target

Press escape multiple times until prompted to save the config and choose YES

Build the kernel
make (Optionally pass -j $(nproc) to speed it up)
make modules_install
make headers_install INSTALL_HDR_PATH=$INSTALL_MOD_PATH
cd $RPIDIR/tools-master/mkimage
./imagetool-uncompressed.py ${KERNEL_SRC}/arch/arm/boot/zImage
cp kernel.img $RPIDIR/root/boot/.
Transfer to the RPi
tar cz -C $RPIDIR/root . | ssh root@192.168.1.2 tar xz -C / (Replace the IP with the IP of your Pi, ignore the error of ownership change)
ssh root@192.168.1.2 reboot (Replace the IP with the IP of your Pi)

Installing dependencies:

Connect to the RPi over SSH(root/root) and run:

pacman -S screen (answer Yes to all)
screen bash — Start a screen session in case we disconnect
pacman -S gcc lxc make patch git mercurial sqlite sudo yaourt
yaourt -S debootstrap
Install gnupg1
yaourt -S gnupg1
Edit PKGBUILD when prompted and replace arch=('i686' 'x86_64') with arch=('any')
export PATH=/usr/local/go/bin:/root/go/bin:$PATH
export GOPATH=/root/go:/root/go/src/github.com/dotcloud/docker/vendor
curl https://go.googlecode.com/files/go1.2rc2.src.tar.gz | tar xz -C /usr/local
cd /usr/local/go/src
./make.bash
cd $HOME
curl https://codeload.github.com/morfoh/aufs-util/tar.gz/aufs3.x-rcN | tar xz
cd $HOME/aufs-util-aufs3.x-rcN
sed -i 's/7/0/' ver.c
make && make install

Install docker

mkdir -p /root/go/src/github.com/dotcloud/docker
cd /root/go/src/github.com/dotcloud/docker
git clone https://github.com/dotcloud/docker.git .
git checkout v0.6.4
curl https://gist.github.com/petrosagg/7260553/raw/docker-arm-v0.6.4.patch | git apply -
export VERSION=$(cat ./VERSION)
export GITCOMMIT=$(git rev-parse --short HEAD)
export LDFLAGS="-X main.GITCOMMIT $GITCOMMIT -X main.VERSION $VERSION -w -linkmode external -extldflags '-static -Wl,--unresolved-symbols=ignore-in-shared-libs'"
go build -v -o /root/go/bin/docker -ldflags "$LDFLAGS" ./docker

Make the base image

sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
docker -d &
cd contrib
curl -s https://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian.public.key | gpg --import
./mkimage-debian.sh raspbian wheezy https://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian

Build docker 0.6.6 using docker 0.6.4

cd /root/go/src/github.com/dotcloud/docker
git reset --hard
curl https://gist.github.com/petrosagg/7260553/raw/docker-arm-v0.6.6.patch | git apply -
docker build -t docker .
docker run -privileged -v `pwd`:/go/src/github.com/dotcloud/docker docker hack/make.sh binary

Hopefully the above instructions worked, and you should now be able to use Docker on your Raspberry Pi!

Updates

11/11/2013

Replaced step 2.11. patch -p1 < aufs3-proc_map.patch with patch -p1 < aufs3-loopback.patch
Changed instructions for resizing the partition sizes. Now done on the Raspberry Pi instead via GParted.
Ensure screen is install before we try to use it in Installing dependencies.

You can follow the discussion on Hackernews, or follow us on Twitter at @balena_io, to keep track of our progress or to ask us questions, or email us. Why not signup for an invite to our platform?

Chat to the team in our community chat.