Control and configure Docker with systemd
Many Linux distributions use systemd to start the Docker daemon. This document shows a few examples of how to customize Docker’s settings.
Starting the Docker daemon
Once Docker is installed, you will need to start the Docker daemon.
$ sudo systemctl start docker # or on older distributions, you may need to use $ sudo service docker start
If you want Docker to start at boot, you should also:
$ sudo systemctl enable docker # or on older distributions, you may need to use $ sudo chkconfig docker on
Custom Docker daemon options
There are a number of ways to configure the daemon flags and environment variables for your Docker daemon.
The recommended way is to use a systemd drop-in file (as described in the systemd.unit documentation). These are local files named <something>.conf
in the /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d
directory. This could also be /etc/systemd/system/docker.service
, which also works for overriding the defaults from /lib/systemd/system/docker.service
.
However, if you had previously used a package which had an EnvironmentFile
(often pointing to /etc/sysconfig/docker
) then for backwards compatibility, you drop a file with a .conf
extension into the /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d
directory including the following:
[Service] EnvironmentFile=-/etc/sysconfig/docker EnvironmentFile=-/etc/sysconfig/docker-storage EnvironmentFile=-/etc/sysconfig/docker-network ExecStart= ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker daemon -H fd:// $OPTIONS \ $DOCKER_STORAGE_OPTIONS \ $DOCKER_NETWORK_OPTIONS \ $BLOCK_REGISTRY \ $INSECURE_REGISTRY
To check if the docker.service
uses an EnvironmentFile
:
$ systemctl show docker | grep EnvironmentFile EnvironmentFile=-/etc/sysconfig/docker (ignore_errors=yes)
Alternatively, find out where the service file is located:
$ systemctl show --property=FragmentPath docker FragmentPath=/usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service $ grep EnvironmentFile /usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service EnvironmentFile=-/etc/sysconfig/docker
You can customize the Docker daemon options using override files as explained in the HTTP Proxy example below. The files located in /usr/lib/systemd/system
or /lib/systemd/system
contain the default options and should not be edited.
Runtime directory and storage driver
You may want to control the disk space used for Docker images, containers and volumes by moving it to a separate partition.
In this example, we’ll assume that your docker.service
file looks something like:
[Unit] Description=Docker Application Container Engine Documentation=https://docs.docker.com After=network.target docker.socket Requires=docker.socket [Service] Type=notify ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker daemon -H fd:// LimitNOFILE=1048576 LimitNPROC=1048576 TasksMax=1048576 [Install] Also=docker.socket
This will allow us to add extra flags via a drop-in file (mentioned above) by placing a file containing the following in the /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d
directory:
[Service] ExecStart= ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker daemon -H fd:// --graph="/mnt/docker-data" --storage-driver=overlay
You can also set other environment variables in this file, for example, the HTTP_PROXY
environment variables described below.
To modify the ExecStart configuration, specify an empty configuration followed by a new configuration as follows:
[Service] ExecStart= ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker daemon -H fd:// --bip=172.17.42.1/16
If you fail to specify an empty configuration, Docker reports an error such as:
docker.service has more than one ExecStart= setting, which is only allowed for Type=oneshot services. Refusing.
HTTP proxy
This example overrides the default docker.service
file.
If you are behind an HTTP proxy server, for example in corporate settings, you will need to add this configuration in the Docker systemd service file.
First, create a systemd drop-in directory for the docker service:
mkdir /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d
Now create a file called /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d/http-proxy.conf
that adds the HTTP_PROXY
environment variable:
[Service] Environment="HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy.example.com:80/"
If you have internal Docker registries that you need to contact without proxying you can specify them via the NO_PROXY
environment variable:
Environment="HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy.example.com:80/" "NO_PROXY=localhost,127.0.0.1,docker-registry.somecorporation.com"
Flush changes:
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
Verify that the configuration has been loaded:
$ systemctl show --property=Environment docker Environment=HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy.example.com:80/
Restart Docker:
$ sudo systemctl restart docker
Manually creating the systemd unit files
When installing the binary without a package, you may want to integrate Docker with systemd. For this, simply install the two unit files (service and socket) from the github repository to /etc/systemd/system
.
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