How To Install and Use Docker Compose on Ubuntu 22.04

Published on April 26, 2022

Ubuntu 22.04

Docker

Ubuntu

By Tony Tran and Erika Heidi

How To Install and Use Docker Compose on Ubuntu 22.04

Introduction

Docker Compose is a tool that allows you to run multi-container application environments based on definitions set in a YAML file. It uses service definitions to build fully customizable environments with multiple containers that can share networks and data volumes.

In this guide, you’ll demonstrate how to install Docker Compose on an Ubuntu 22.04 server and how to get started using this tool.

Prerequisites

Initial Server Setup Guide for Ubuntu 22.04 .

Docker installed on your server or local machine, following Steps 1 and 2 of How To Install and Use Docker on Ubuntu 22.04 .

Note: Starting with Docker Compose v2, Docker has migrated towards using the compose CLI plugin command, and away from the original docker-compose as documented in our previous Ubuntu 20.04 version of this tutorial . While the installation differs, in general the actual usage involves dropping the hyphen from docker-compose calls to become docker compose . For full compatibility details, check the official Docker documentation on command compatibility between the new compose and the old docker-compose .

Step 1 — Installing Docker Compose

official Github repository .

First, confirm the latest version available in their releases page . At the time of this writing, the most current stable version is 2.3.3 .

Use the following command to download:

mkdir -p ~/.docker/cli-plugins/
curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.3.3/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose
Next, set  the correct permissions so that the docker compose command is executable:
chmod +x ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose
To verify that the installation was successful, you can run:
docker compose version
You’ll see output similar to this:
Output
Docker Compose version v2.3.3
Docker Compose is now successfully installed on your system. In the next section, you’ll see how to set up a docker-compose.yml file and get a containerized environment up and running with this tool.
Step 2 — Setting Up a docker-compose.yml File

To demonstrate how to set up a docker-compose.yml file and work with Docker Compose, you’ll create a web server environment using the official Nginx image from Docker Hub, the public Docker registry. This containerized environment will serve a single static HTML file.
Start off by creating a new directory in your home folder, and then moving into it:
mkdir ~/compose-demo
cd ~/compose-demo
In this directory, set up an application folder to serve as the document root for your Nginx environment:
mkdir app
Using your preferred text editor, create a new index.html file within the app folder:
nano app/index.html
Place the following content into this file:
~/compose-demo/app/index.html
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>Docker Compose Demo</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/kognise/water.css@latest/dist/dark.min.css">
</head>
    <h1>This is a Docker Compose Demo Page.</h1>
    <p>This content is being served by an Nginx container.</p>
</body>
</html>
Save and close the file when you’re done. If you are using nano, you can do that by typing CTRL+X, then Y and ENTER to confirm.
Next, create the docker-compose.yml file:
nano docker-compose.yml
Insert the following content in your docker-compose.yml file:
docker-compose.yml
version: '3.7'
services:
  web:
    image: nginx:alpine
    ports:
      - "8000:80"
    volumes:
      - ./app:/usr/share/nginx/html
The docker-compose.yml file typically starts off with the version definition. This will tell Docker Compose which configuration version you’re using.
You then have the services block, where you set up the services that are part of this environment. In your case, you have a single service called web. This service uses the nginx:alpine image and sets up a port redirection with the ports directive. All requests on port 8000 of the host machine (the system from where you’re running Docker Compose) will be redirected to the web container on port 80, where Nginx will be running.




    

The volumes directive will create a shared volume between the host machine and the container. This will share the local app folder with the container, and the volume will be located at /usr/share/nginx/html inside the container, which will then overwrite the default document root for Nginx.
Save and close the file.
You have set up a demo page and a docker-compose.yml file to create a containerized web server environment that will serve it. In the next step, you’ll bring this environment up with Docker Compose.
Step 3  —  Running Docker Compose

With the docker-compose.yml file in place, you can now execute Docker Compose to bring your environment up. The following command will download the necessary Docker images, create a container for the web service, and run the containerized environment in background mode:
docker compose up -d
Docker Compose will first look for the defined image on your local system, and if it can’t locate the image it will download the image from Docker Hub. You’ll see output like this:
Output
Creating network "compose-demo_default" with the default driver
Pulling web (nginx:alpine)...
alpine: Pulling from library/nginx
cbdbe7a5bc2a: Pull complete
10c113fb0c77: Pull complete
9ba64393807b: Pull complete
c829a9c40ab2: Pull complete
61d685417b2f: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:57254039c6313fe8c53f1acbf15657ec9616a813397b74b063e32443427c5502
Status: Downloaded newer image for nginx:alpine
Creating compose-demo_web_1 ... done
Note: If you run into a permission error regarding the Docker socket, this means you skipped Step 2 of How To Install and Use Docker on Ubuntu 22.04. Going back and completing that step will enable permissions to run docker commands without sudo.
Your environment is now up and running in the background. To verify that the container is active, you can run:
docker compose ps
This command will show you information about the running containers and their state, as well as any port redirections currently in place:
Output       Name                     Command               State          Ports        
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
compose-demo_web_1   /docker-entrypoint.sh ngin ...   Up      0.0.0.0:8000->80/tcp
You can now access the demo application by pointing your browser to either localhost:8000 if you are running this demo on your local machine, or your_server_domain_or_IP:8000 if you are running this demo on a remote server.
You’ll see a page like this:
The shared volume you’ve set up within the docker-compose.yml file keeps your app folder files in sync with the container’s document root. If you make any changes to the index.html file, they will be automatically picked up by the container and thus reflected on your browser when you reload the page.
In the next step, you’ll see how to manage your containerized environment with Docker Compose commands.
Step 4  — Getting Familiar with Docker Compose Commands

You’ve seen how to set up a docker-compose.yml file and bring your environment up with docker compose up. You’ll now see how to use Docker Compose commands to manage and interact with your containerized environment.
To check the logs produced by your Nginx container, you can use the logs command:
docker compose logs
You’ll see output similar to this:
Output
Attaching to compose-demo_web_1
web_1  | /docker-entrypoint.sh: /docker-entrypoint.d/ is not empty, will attempt to perform configuration
web_1  | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Looking for shell scripts in /docker-entrypoint.d/
web_1  | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Launching /docker-entrypoint.d/10-listen-on-ipv6-by-default.sh
web_1  | 10-listen-on-ipv6-by-default.sh: Getting the checksum of /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
web_1  | 10-listen-on-ipv6-by-default.sh: Enabled listen on IPv6 in /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
web_1  | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Launching /docker-entrypoint.d/20-envsubst-on-templates.sh
web_1  | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Configuration complete; ready for start up
web_1  | 172.22.0.1 - - [02/Jun/2020:10:47:13 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 353 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/83.0.4103.61 Safari/537.36" "-"
If you want to pause the environment execution without changing the current state of your containers, you can use:
docker compose pause
Output
Pausing compose-demo_web_1 ... done
To resume execution after issuing a pause:
docker compose unpause
Output
Unpausing compose-demo_web_1 ... done
The stop command will terminate the container execution, but it won’t destroy any data associated with your containers:
docker compose stop
Output
Stopping compose-demo_web_1 ... done
If you want to remove the containers, networks, and volumes associated with this containerized environment, use the down command:
docker compose down
Output
Removing compose-demo_web_1 ... done
Removing network compose-demo_default
Notice that this won’t remove the base image used by Docker Compose to spin up your environment (in your case, nginx:alpine). This way, whenever you bring your environment up again with a docker compose up, the process will be much faster since the image is already on your system.
In case you want to also remove the base image from your system, you can use:
docker image rm nginx:alpine
OutputUntagged: nginx:alpine
Untagged: nginx@sha256:b89a6ccbda39576ad23fd079978c967cecc6b170db6e7ff8a769bf2259a71912
Deleted: sha256:7d0cdcc60a96a5124763fddf5d534d058ad7d0d8d4c3b8be2aefedf4267d0270
Deleted: sha256:05a0eaca15d731e0029a7604ef54f0dda3b736d4e987e6ac87b91ac7aac03ab1
Deleted: sha256:c6bbc4bdac396583641cb44cd35126b2c195be8fe1ac5e6c577c14752bbe9157
Deleted: sha256:35789b1e1a362b0da8392ca7d5759ef08b9a6b7141cc1521570f984dc7905eb6
Deleted: sha256:a3efaa65ec344c882fe5d543a392a54c4ceacd1efd91662d06964211b1be4c08
Deleted: sha256:3e207b409db364b595ba862cdc12be96dcdad8e36c59a03b7b3b61c946a5741a
Note: Please refer to our guide on How to Install and Use Docker for a more detailed reference on Docker commands.
Conclusion

In this guide, you’ve seen how to install Docker Compose and set up a containerized environment based on an Nginx web server image. You’ve also seen how to manage this environment using Compose commands.
For a complete reference of all available docker compose commands, check the official documentation.

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                      Erika Heidi
                     
                     
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Dev/Ops passionate about open source, PHP, and Linux. Former Senior Technical Writer at DigitalOcean. Areas of expertise include LAMP Stack, Ubuntu, Debian 11, Linux, Ansible, and more.


                
                 
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                      May 23, 2022

Wonderful tutorial! I followed this tutorial for installing. Then I found this one that has a good tip on using bash aliases.


                 
                  
                   Is there any difference in installing docker compose in .docker/cli-plugins/ vs installing it in /usr/local/bin/ ? The latter is what the linked guide says to do. This is what your older guide (20.04) and the one linked above is asking me to do.


                   
                    
                     
                      December 26, 2023

Thx for the tutorial! I am constantly running into the issue that I cant mount any directory into the container which is outside of the current folder structure of the home directory of the user who installed docker compose. The container directory is empty but should contain the files in the host directory. E.g.


                 
                  volumes:
 - ./www:/var/www/html

Report this

How To Install and Use Docker Compose on Ubuntu 22.04

Introduction

Prerequisites

Step 1 — Installing Docker Compose

Step 2 — Setting Up a `docker-compose.yml` File

Step 3 — Running Docker Compose

Step 4 — Getting Familiar with Docker Compose Commands

Conclusion

`Tutorial Series: Getting Started With Cloud Computing`

`About the author(s)`

`Still looking for an answer?`