Docker Containers On Proxmox! (Two Different Ways - No VMs!)

In this video I show two different ways for running Docker containers on Proxmox - either directly on the underlying OS or as an LXC container. Since VMs are the default way, I decided to not talk about that method here.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:40 Motivation / Background Info
01:48 Docker on the OS behind Proxmox
08:03 Docker in an LXC container in Proxmox
20:30 Mounting folders to LXC containers
24:45 Closing thoughts
The list of commands I used in the video: gist.github.com/TheTinkerDad/...
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Background music: Harris Heller (www.streambeats.com)

[@jonayamaha3215]

you can do keyctl and nesting just by clicking on the ct (100) -> options -> double click on features.

[@some1stoleit]

Thanks for the tutorial. As a complete beginner to Proxmox, I may just go the VM route for now, but I can see myself coming back to this one when I get more familiar.

[@barrow_me]

YES! I recently started using Proxmox and Docker w/in LXC containers is AWESOME!!!

[@TheTinkerDad]

Yes, awesome it is! I'm in the process of breaking down my Docker host VM into smaller chunks using LXC containers, keeping together only those Docker containers that belong together anyway.

[@barrow_me]

@@TheTinkerDad it’s almost like you’re diy-ing k8s. Each lxc is akin to a k8s pod. :)

[@TheTinkerDad]

Haha, indeed! Never thought of it like that, but you're right :)

[@bujin5455]

Absolutely excellent walk-through! Thank you for putting this together.

[@raymondcarr2615]

One of the best videos I've seen on this subject. Well done. Thanks for creating it.

[@BredihinKA]

Спасибо тебе добрый человек. Теперь у меня наконец закончился геморой с контейнерами в TrueNas Scale 😀

[@xyloidify]

Already subscribed, so I gave you a thumbs up! This proceedure worked great, thanks for taking the time to share you knowledge. I also thank you for the github where you put the commands! Now I have a docker running Trilium (note taking software) and you made it easy!

[@derekp6636]

Excellent guide, got me up and running on an lxc container quick now I can play with some prebuilt containers =)

[@phil2768]

Thanks you so much for the great work. I've been wanting to set up my home lab for a few months now to facilitate with my project to share my tech knowledge with others, like you and other KZbinrs for free. This video was part of the missing key for hosting my services from my home network.

[@ScharadaLP]

hey i found your video interessting i have something to add 1. if you go in container tab into the options you can double click the features and you can klick keyctl 2. if you go in container tab into the resources you cann add a mount point which will backuped if you backup the container thanks for the video edit: in proxmox ve 7

[@TheTinkerDad]

Hi, Thanks for watching and thanks for the comment! I'm already working on an updated version of this video for Proxmox 7. Basically the plan is to release an updated version of all those videos which are affected by the PVE 6 vs. PVE 7 difference.

[@ScharadaLP]

@@TheTinkerDad another thing i use Proxmox VE 7.2-3 on that i startet a ct with debian buster in that ct i installed docker as you showed in the video my first real use of docker and i must say the default docker storage driver in the container is vfs which is really inperformant maybe you want to add a part where you go to improve this performanz leak lg

[@MotownBatman]

Whats Up Tinker Dad! New Sub, Dryden, Michigan, US (Kid Rock Country) Excellent Video! I was in the IT Field 20 years ago after High School; Life changed, got Out of it. Trying to Teach Myself ProXmox, a Whole new Level of IT & VMs that I'm used to lol Thank you for the Help!

[@razblack]

woooh whooo, its' there! lol, that made me giggle /idkw i'm a software engineer, and learning more of backend container solutions available and how to setup my own development environment. at where i work we use ci/cd pipelines via gitlab, which is backed by tanzu in aws. it is all managed/configured by other teams.... we just do our software development and push out via ci/cd.... very simple. with that, i am exploring a way to setup a home server so that here i can basically do the same but for my own growth as a software engineer. the hard part is setting up a system to work with my dev tools to manage and deploy to containers. so far, i've tried just setting up ubuntu, installing docker, virtual box, protainer and had issues... so now i'm starting over and exploring with proxmox, but seems that too may have some blockers for me when it comes to working with container orchestration. anyway, thanks for the video.. was very enlightening

[@ayudatransporte3762]

Great video. Thanks for sharing!!!

[@thoriumriver]

Thanks for this great tutorial!

[@eananyev]

Nice way, thanks! TKL templates are good, but preconfigured a little not I Iike. Docker gives me another layer of granularity. What about Alpine-based LXC or Ubuntu? Are they better or not?

[@JohnMitchellCalif]

solid and clear explanation! Subscribed

[@TheTinkerDad]

Awesome, thank you!

[@jared4670]

Thanks mate. I have now entered the world of LXC Containers on proxmox. I have a few VM's that I am going to convert. Cheers!

[@halaszpeter84]

Köszi sokat segített a mappák felmountolása :-)

[@Xavier_BE]

thanks for the video, very helpful !

[@castaniapilonga498]

There will be no backup for /media/folder, will there? How do you backup non-VMs and non-CTs Proxmox stuff? Nice video. Thank you! It'd be nice to have another one getting into those details you mention.

[@itimtf8477]

Thnaks for the interesting video. Any recommendations on running this on ceph filesystem, and get everything backed up/restored too using regular proxmox backup tools ?

[@Liv4IT]

Pretty interesting video thanks 😊

[@echobucket]

I run my docker containers inside a proxmox container.. One big advantage here is that I can migrate this container to another machine and all my containers move as well. If you run docker in a VM, you get even more migration power because you can live migrate all the docker containers without downtime (but you do need the overhead of a VM)

[@Michael201078]

Very good explanation

[@TheTinkerDad]

Thank you, glad you liked it!

[@TheTinkerDad]

I made a new video where I go into details I only touched here about how to safely mount folders into LXC containers via bind mounts, set proper access permissions, troubleshoot binding issues, etc. Check that out as well: kzbin.info/www/bejne/h4WQiIpqnsitkJI This hopefully answers a lot of questions!

[@bridgetrobertson7134]

I mostly run containers on Open Media Vault. But that is getting messy and it was meant to be cold storage for the 25TB or so of stuff my family has collected over the years. I'm looking at various solutions just for containers because we now rely on them for various family and business services. I can't even keep track of all the docker junk I have on my storage server. OMV has been rock solid for over two years, though. Time to go pro. Subbing to what else you have up your sleeve.

[@TheTinkerDad]

Hi Sam, Thanks for the sub! I've recently built a new Proxmox host based on PVE 7 (previous one was 6.x based), so you can expect some related videos soon, starting with updating a few of my older vids to reflect the changes happened between the 6.x and 7.x versions. Actually this is something I should have done earlier like a lot of my viewers suggested.

[@AdrianoLeal]

I think you just need a little bit of knowledge/experience. Each software must be used for a "primary" purpose that it was designed for. I use it like this: OMV=NAS Storage (I used docker+portiner for a long time, before) Proxmox = VMs Ubuntu+Docker+Portainer= Container Docker. I have better performance. However, each one does what is best for them, according to the hardware needs and, in addition to practicality. I am evaluating this solution presented in this video. Look great. That's all I have to say/add. Thanks

[@critical-chris]

In general, I understand that in terms of resource usage, the best solution is running docker directly on proxmox, second best is docker in an LXC container, and third best is docker on a virtual machine. But how big are these differences really? Can you give an indication of how much of a burden a VM adds in practice?

[@NathanCroucher]

great one, thanks

[@mahmoudchairi3776]

Thank you sir !

[@apotheosis6614]

nice one mate

[@erczy]

Nagyon sokat segítettél!

[@TheTinkerDad]

Örömmel hallom, köszönöm a visszajelzést! :)

[@WobblycogsUk]

I think the pause when starting the container at 14:03 is being caused by the IPv6 DHCP setting. I bet you don't have a working IPv6 DHCP offering. I had exactly the same issue and stumbled across the solution the other day. Just make the IPv6 setting static and leave it blank.

[@mg3299]

Will you make a video about the permissions so you don’t use the chmod 777 “hack” please.

[@TheTinkerDad]

I like the idea, but not sure how many people would be interested. Tbh I'm tempted to do one anyway - maybe a short one between two other topics. :)

[@RaphealGolden]

Please make a series on this as I'm very interested!

[@pinochetpl]

Can you share your network config? Is it still working after host/guests reboot? For me none of LXC was able to obtain IP address once docker created his interfaces. Actually I figured this out. I needed to configure vmbr0 once again (docker installation broke it). And my use case was to be able to interfere with USB device - since my hardware does not support IOMMU - yet I also recently learned that it is possible to mount device file descriptor to LXC container since it is not a proper VM.

[@mentalplayground]

Love it. Sub added.

[@tonydematteis5029]

Hello and thank you for your video! I wonder if you could expand on the need to install Docker on the Proxmox host? I run LXC containers (Ubuntu) where I install and run Docker along with NFS mounting, etc., without the need to install Docker on the Proxmox host. I've watched over the video a few times and I must be missing the actual reason there's a need to install docker on the host. I also use Ansible to provision said LXC containers to update and install Docker, along w/ any other specific tweaks. Thank you again! Oh, and I noted where Scharada Valcta pointed out you can make the container config change to enable Nesting, etc. right from the UI under the Options->Features (for those that didn't catch it).

[@dazeb]

He was showing two methods as I understand. One method Docker is installed on the Proxmox Host and the other method is using Docker within a LXC container. Great video anyway very educational just what I needed to know. Thanks @The Tinker Dad

[@user-oy7wm9hp8j]

Great video I went from proxmox -> Ubuntu VM -> Docker to Proxmox -> Docker This was to make it easy for multiple docker containers to use the hardware GPU. t works really well... as you said , Proxmox is just Debian, so nothing _technically_ wrong with doing it. It still feels does feel a little wrong though! Maybe next time I'll use Proxmox -> LXC Ununtu -> Docker

[@mailoo59]

At the moment Docker in LXC isn't officially supported and also isn't recommended just refer in their forum.

[@capseyconstruction4591]

I am new so I am not sure if this is a dumb question but I keep getting stuck on step 2 & 3 setting up the repository. i don't know how to save and exit after I input the echo command in step 3. when I initially googled it the forums said use ctrl+c but that just seems to cancel everything. so question 1. how to save and exit when installing the repo? question 2 I am unable to copy from windows and paste in proxmox. how did you do that?

[@gergelymecs5870]

Good video! interestng approach! I use a proxmox, and vm-s for anything else..only a fileserver runs in container. With lxc containers, you are in a hard-relation with the proxmox os version. Inside a vm, everything is separated, so a main system upgrade cant cause issues inside the vm and vice-versa. I'm not innocent..i use a truenas on proxmox inside a vm and passing a raid controller to the truenas...so i also did my hack :D Anyway, thanks for the video!

[@badpickle2347]

Thanks for the video - i'm pretty new to proxmox but if not to much trouble can you explain what the 101 controller is i looked in your videos and didnt see anything for controller. TY - - - Also is this video still a guide that can still be used or are their updated or better ways on setting up docker. Thanks again

[@TheTinkerDad]

Hi, Sorry for the slow response. The "Controller" is just a VM running some of my smart home stuff like an MQTT broker, etc. and doesn't have to do anything with the video. You can ignore it. This video is for Proxmox 6, so if you're just starting with Proxmox, you'll probably have version 7 now. For version 7, there's another video I've made: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rWivmnxvgZKEqLc

[@badpickle2347]

@@TheTinkerDad understood and thank you - - Have a good day.

[@irtibatkisileri222]

Up until i see this content i was naively popping vms for any of stuff including docker. i was thinking these lxc should be useful but did not know how. now i just remember i stopped using lxc for docker because on proxmox it is a pain to pass-through a usb devide to lxc. may be our host can make another lxc content regarding usb pass-through. thanks for this tutorial.

[@TheTinkerDad]

To be honest, you're not the first one asking for such a video, so it's already something I'm working on :) Stay tuned!

[@ronm6585]

Thanks.

[@haxorflakes]

ipv6 is what causes that blank console apparently. instead of DHCP, selecting slac usually fixes it.

[@skydragon1966]

Help Please. I got docker installed ok, but when i go to set up my container in the Disks section I have nothing to choose and thats a s far as i get. off to the left there is a yellow triangle and it reads rootfs. Any Ideas?

[@lukecage9964]

are you aware of these dmesg error logs in the host? overlayfs: upper fs does not support RENAME_WHITEOUT. overlayfs: upper fs does not support xattr, falling back to xino=off. overlayfs: upper fs missing required features.

[@OperKH]

I using ZFS on Proxmox and have a docker in LXC. I stick with problem that "nginx-proxy-managed" docker image takes over 8Gb of storage - for each image. The issue was that docker in LXC see that it use ZFS file system and try to use zfs storage driver - but fails and fallback to vfs - that is very slow and waste space for each image layer. I resolve my problem by creating a block volume on ZFS, then format it to ext4 and mounted it to LXC "/var/lib/docker" folder - now docker see ext4 fs with full access and can use overlay2 storage driver. I free up tons of space and docker now works faster.

[@TheTinkerDad]

This is actually a nice solution, thanks for sharing Alexandr!

[@terrorpup]

Cool Video. What do you use to manage the docker containers? I am do you use an gui base docker management tool?

[@TheTinkerDad]

Hi Chuck, I mostly use Portainer - in fact, I'm working on a video right now about showcasing Portainer / Portainer Agent on Proxmox to manage these LXC based mini Docker hosts and the Docker containers running on top of them.

[@RaphealGolden]

Yea I'm subbed now

[@stepannovotny4291]

Well presented, thanks for sharing your intelligence! If you want to make a long video, then please do it for PodMan.

[@antoniomax3163]

How do I undo all the changes made this way? If I don't want to reinstall the proxmox system

[@TheLarsUrban]

Wouldn't it be better to set up a user for docker and run it there?

[@nbarrager]

So I'd make a separate LXC container for each Docker container, or would I make all Docker CTs under one LXC?

[@jj-icejoe6642]

All in one

[@littlebighumancom]

When I create containers, I don't have the /etc/pve folder.

[@LostOnTheLine]

So 1st, thanks for the video. 2nd, running Docker on the host is what I believe I will do, but I'm curious as to why you didn't create a separate user for docker? that way you aren't running it as root `adduser docker` add a user named "docker" `usermod -aG sudo docker` add that user to the "sudo" group This is what I intend to do, then in the proxmox `SHELL` install Docker as the user "docker" by running the CLI as docker by: `su docker` change login to user "docker" if you do this then the "sudo" part will be required & I assume everything else will be the same... But I'm not sure, that's why I was here in the first place trying to see how best to do it

[@TheTinkerDad]

You're right to be honest, but personally I only wanted to show that Docker containers could be in fact run on the Proxmox host itself. Ultimately, I decided that for me the best will be to run all my Docker containers inside LXC containers, grouped up based on functionality and dependencies.

[@LostOnTheLine]

@@TheTinkerDad but doesn't that mean you have a bunch of instances of the Docker daemon running? If you use Portainer or a similar manager it's easy to group them without the wasted resources or overhead. I ended up doing mine on the host... But it was annoying due to permissions. Many of the containers I had to run with a `user: 1000:1000` in the dockerfile even though the directory they were binding to was chmod 777ed. That was one of the best things about running on WSL2 in Windows, permissions. You can set the read/write for the folder in windows & the container can chown & chmod however they like & their OS will tell them it's what they set, if the user does not exist it does not matter, 2 containers can access the same folder & think they chown it, with different internal users & it just works. Linux Permissions are annoying. If I have a `/docker/log` directory I want everyone to be able to read & write to I have to add a bunch of users & setfacl for each. I actually setup something on my Promox server I'd recommend. When adding a Docker user I realized when I SU into it it had color hinting, but root is set to not. So I copied the color_prompt settings from /home/docker/.bashrc to /root/.bashrc & changed the color of the root@proxmox: to red & for docker to blue because I feel docker is supposed to be blue. A simple mod, but I always recommend making it easy to tell what user you are working under in CLI.

[@antoniomax3163]

arch: amd64 cmode: shell cores: 2 hostname: docker memory: 2048 net0: name=eth0,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1,hwaddr=AA:5F:4C:18:77:81,ip=dhcp,ip6=dhcp,type=veth ostype: debian rootfs: local-lvm:vm-101-disk-0,size=8G swap: 512 features: keyctl=1,nesting=1" to the file

[@davidniquot6423]

Not a good idea ... no easy backup available ... just install a small linux in Vm .. then docker

[@jamesmills4946]

> Docker Containers On Proxmox This is a bit misleading. your video (whilst I'm sure you went to some effort) really is just about the fact you can run a process on Linux (Debian) which Proxmix is just a suite of commonly found open source software (plus some written by the Proxmox team).

[@TheTinkerDad]

I literally tell this in the video - on the other hand, I can't really set the title to "Docker containers on Proxmox which is basically Debian", can I? I mean I probably could, but that wouldn't make a good title, right? Also, since Debian itself is also a "suite of commonly found open source software" on top of the Linux kernel (hence it's called a distribution), following your logic even saying "Debian" would be misleading... Unless you want me to set the title to "Docker containers on Proxmox, which is basically Debian, which is just another Linux" or something :) Since people download "Proxmox" (which is normally used to refer to "Proxmox VE") and also install "Proxmox", I think the title is just fine.

[@jamesmills4946]

@@TheTinkerDad The problem is your title is misleading. This is a common "marketing" technique, catchty, clickbait titles. Great if you're trying to attract traffic to your site or video. Not so great if you're target audience are themselves Engineers and don't tolerate "lying". Good luck in your future videos!

[@TheTinkerDad]

(At this point it feels like you're trolling, but let me try once more, because I'm a patient guy...) I'm an engineer myself (a lead engineer, to be precise) and I still don't have a clue what you're talking about - there's a Debian based Linux distribution called "Proxmox VE" and I'm calling it "Proxmox" like thousands of people out there - it's a common thing. The video is about demonstrating two drastically different ways of running Docker containers on this very specific Linux distribution. How is this misleading? Also, I wonder how on Earth you ended up here - let me guess, you wanted to run something in Docker on.... I don't know.... CentOS, but for some twisted reason, you clicked this anyway? Regardless, I'm happy to see your ideas for a better title that will tell people how to run something in Docker on Proxmox without calling the thing Proxmox or whatever your problem with the title is...

[@jamesmills4946]

@@TheTinkerDad I'm sorry but I"m not trolling. Maybe I'l just retract me comment if you like as it's not really fair to you. I'm also a Lead SRE, I run and operate Proxmox VE clusters myself as well as many production Docker Swarm clusters (both on Proxmox VE and elsewhere). That's why I felt so strongly about your video and it's kind of of misleading title and content. IHMO I really don't think anyone should be encouraged to run Docker containers on a Proxmox VE node at all. But that's just my opinion. Maybe I'll blog about it. Let me know if you'd like me to retract my original comment. Happy to!

[@TheTinkerDad]

Hi James, It's fine, leave your comment as it is, I'm always up for a good debate as long as it stays civilized :) Thanks for explaining the reasoning behind your original comment - now I see your point. I also tell it in the video, that running Docker containers on the node directly is kind of a risk you decide to take and you pretty much lose all the features provided by Proxmox (backups, etc.), but it's certainly possible. I personally don't do it myself either, but that doesn't mean that there's no one out there whose Proxmox installation is so resource-constrained that she/he can't even afford running LXC containers to wrap those Docker containers. Also, this is why I show both ways in the video - personally, I'm in love with LXC containers and use them like makeshift Kubernetes pods - to run Docker containers grouped together, etc.

[@leeiberry]

after using : nano /etc/pve/local/lxc/300.conf .. add the "features: keyctl=1,nesting=1" as the last line .. i exit and save .. go back into the file and the last line is "features: keyctl=1,nesting=1" ... all ok Reboot the container ... then try the the test docker install ... " docker run -d --name=netdata -p 19999:19999......." it just sits there with no feedback ... break out and go back to the 300.conf file and the "features: keyctl=1,nesting=1" line is not there !!! i have done this three times without any luck any ideas how to get docker installed ?

[@antoniomax3163]

lxc-attach: 101: ../src/lxc/attach.c: get_attach_context: 405 Connection refused - Failed to get init pid lxc-attach: 101: ../src/lxc/attach.c: lxc_attach: 1469 Connection refused - Failed to get attach context pls, not working,

[@jared4670]

After playing with this for a day I have found that the LXC container keeps on losing network connectivity. I have to restart network-online.target to get it back up or to restart the container. Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

[@clintbishop9145]

I had the same problem using the debian templates, this is the reason why I switched to Alpine Linux in VM instead, to many problems with containers. The default sys install is only 50 something megabyte. And if you experience a blank screen when you try to login, its an IPv6 problem. If you disable IPv6 in the debian container, you will be able to reboot and login without long delay, or long blank screen.

[@jared4670]

@@clintbishop9145 yeah, after dealing with this nonsense for awhile I found that the LXC Debain container was losing its network due to having ipv6 enabled. Once disabled I did not have another network issue.