moby--moby/docs/sources/installation/mac.md

page_title: Installation on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard page_description: Please note this project is currently under heavy development. It should not be used in production. page_keywords: Docker, Docker documentation, requirements, virtualbox, ssh, linux, os x, osx, mac

Mac OS X

Note

: These instructions are available with the new release of Docker (version 0.8). However, they are subject to change.

Note

: Docker is still under heavy development! We don't recommend using it in production yet, but we're getting closer with each release. Please see our blog post, Getting to Docker 1.0

Docker is supported on Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" or newer.

How To Install Docker On Mac OS X

VirtualBox

Docker on OS X needs VirtualBox to run. To begin with, head over to VirtualBox Download Page and get the tool for OS X hosts x86/amd64.

Once the download is complete, open the disk image, run the set up file (i.e. VirtualBox.pkg) and install VirtualBox. Do not simply copy the package without running the installer.

boot2docker

boot2docker provides a handy script to easily manage the VM running the docker daemon. It also takes care of the installation for the OS image that is used for the job.

With Homebrew

If you are using Homebrew on your machine, simply run the following command to install boot2docker:

brew install boot2docker

Manual installation

Open up a new terminal window, if you have not already.

Run the following commands to get boot2docker:

# Enter the installation directory
cd ~/bin

# Get the file
curl https://raw.github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/master/boot2docker > boot2docker

# Mark it executable
chmod +x boot2docker

Docker OS X Client

The docker daemon is accessed using the docker client.

With Homebrew

Run the following command to install the docker client:

brew install docker

Manual installation

Run the following commands to get it downloaded and set up:

# Get the docker client file
DIR=$(mktemp -d ${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/dockerdl.XXXXXXX) && \
curl -f -o $DIR/ld.tgz https://get.docker.io/builds/Darwin/x86_64/docker-latest.tgz && \
gunzip $DIR/ld.tgz && \
tar xvf $DIR/ld.tar -C $DIR/ && \
cp $DIR/usr/local/bin/docker ./docker

# Set the environment variable for the docker daemon
export DOCKER_HOST=tcp://127.0.0.1:4243

# Copy the executable file
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin
sudo cp docker /usr/local/bin/

And that's it! Let's check out how to use it.

How To Use Docker On Mac OS X

The docker daemon (via boot2docker)

Inside the ~/bin directory, run the following commands:

# Initiate the VM
./boot2docker init

# Run the VM (the docker daemon)
./boot2docker up

# To see all available commands:
./boot2docker

# Usage ./boot2docker {init|start|up|pause|stop|restart|status|info|delete|ssh|download}

The docker client

Once the VM with the docker daemon is up, you can use the docker client just like any other application.

docker version
# Client version: 0.7.6
# Go version (client): go1.2
# Git commit (client): bc3b2ec
# Server version: 0.7.5
# Git commit (server): c348c04
# Go version (server): go1.2

Forwarding VM Port Range to Host

If we take the port range that docker uses by default with the -P option (49000-49900), and forward same range from host to vm, we'll be able to interact with our containers as if they were running locally:

# vm must be powered off
for i in {49000..49900}; do
 VBoxManage modifyvm "boot2docker-vm" --natpf1 "tcp-port$i,tcp,,$i,,$i";
 VBoxManage modifyvm "boot2docker-vm" --natpf1 "udp-port$i,udp,,$i,,$i";
done

SSH-ing The VM

If you feel the need to connect to the VM, you can simply run:

./boot2docker ssh

# User: docker
# Pwd:  tcuser

You can now continue with the Hello World example.

Learn More

boot2docker:

See the GitHub page for boot2docker.

If SSH complains about keys:

ssh-keygen -R '[localhost]:2022'

Upgrading to a newer release of boot2docker

To upgrade an initialised VM, you can use the following 3 commands. Your persistence disk will not be changed, so you won't lose your images and containers:

./boot2docker stop
./boot2docker download
./boot2docker start

About the way Docker works on Mac OS X:

Docker has two key components: the docker daemon and the docker client. The tool works by client commanding the daemon. In order to work and do its magic, the daemon makes use of some Linux Kernel features (e.g. LXC, name spaces etc.), which are not supported by OS X. Therefore, the solution of getting Docker to run on OS X consists of running it inside a lightweight virtual machine. In order to simplify things, Docker comes with a bash script to make this whole process as easy as possible (i.e. boot2docker).