Install Docker on Raspberry Pi Installing Docker and Docker Compose on the Raspberry Pi in 5 Simple Steps

You know what Docker is. You know what a Raspberry Pi is. Let me make sure they hit it off together. 😎🤝🏽

This is probably one of the quickest and easiest ways to get Docker and Docker Compose running on the Raspberry Pi.
(Tested with Raspberry Pi B+ Rev 1.2 and Raspberry Pi 4)

After searching the Inter-Webs for hours and having several things not work for me, I decided something needed to be done about it.

Steps

1. Install Docker

curl -sSL https://get.docker.com | sh

2. Add permission to Pi User to run Docker Commands

sudo usermod -aG docker pi

Reboot here or run the next commands with a sudo

3. Test Docker installation

docker run hello-world

4. IMPORTANT! Install proper dependencies

sudo apt-get install -y libffi-dev libssl-dev

sudo apt-get install -y python3 python3-pip

sudo apt-get remove python-configparser

5. Install Docker Compose

sudo pip3 -v install docker-compose

Boom! 🔥 It's done!

Important Notice about Docker on the Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pis use the ARM architecture, and as a result, won't be compatible with all containers out of the box. Images will need to be built from an ARM base image. But, most of these images can easily be found on Docker Hub

Comments

[Andy Raddatz]

Thanks for this, but I also had to install libssl-dev before the final sudo pip install docker-compose worked

[Rohan Sawant]

I'll update the post to include this as well! Thanks! 👍🏽

[Rohan Sawant]

Boom! It's done. Anything more? 😇

[Andrés Gutiérrez]

Thanks for the post

[aaron]

Thanks,
also install python-dev / python3-dev

[Rohan Sawant]

Ah, I had this already installed, so missed it. 😅

[Brian Christner]

It seems a problem with the docker python client. After running docker-compose for the first time. You get the error ImportError: No module named ssl_match_hostname on init

The fix is cp -r /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/backports/ssl_match_hostname/ /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/backports

[Rohan Sawant]

Hmm, this is weird did you try to install it with Python 3?

Python 2 support ends next year.

Update, in the next few weeks, I'll rewrite this and try again on a fresh installation that should help me find the errors.

[Brian Christner]

I was just using the standard installers as listed in your instructions (which are great BTW). Everything from first glance still uses Python2.

[Rohan Sawant]

Yeah, you are correct, I just re-read my own post and yep everything seems to be using Python 3 😅

Please disregard my last comment.

I'll update the post and fix the remaining issues soon, that should help with my confusion.

Just out of curiosity how did you manage to fix the problem? By copying the dependency? I haven't seen this solution ever before.

[Brian Christner]

This is specific to ARM Docker deployments. The Ubuntu deployments in the Cloud don't seem to have this issue.

I found people having the similar issue after installing docker-compose - github.com/docker/docker-py/issues...

[dbrosy]

this might be a better option.

sudo apt-get remove python-configparser

After removing configparser docker-compose starts as expected.
I removed after installing compose via pip but noted an error related to configparser at end of install so this might be better run after dependencies but before compose. This part I haven't tried

[Rob van Kampen]

Hi Rohan,

after step 1 i got the message back: status = stable.
When i enter step 2 ... i got back: usermod: group 'docker' doesnt exist

Please can you help me?

[Nazareno DeFrancesco]

This helped me solving this problem: raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.p...

[Rohan Sawant]

Hey Rob,

That is super weird. I just tried this with a fresh installation and I did not have any issues.

Does rebooting after installing docker help?

[Erik Neff]

Thx for this post, Rohan! One possible thing to add - when I ran the command: sudo pip install docker-compose on my Raspberry Pi 4 running Ubuntu 19.10, I got the error:

ERROR: Cannot uninstall 'PyYAML'. It is a distutils installed project and thus we cannot accurately determine which files belong to it which would lead to only a partial uninstall.

After reading this thread - stackoverflow.com/questions/499115... - I was able to install docker-compose by adding the ignore-installed flag like this:

sudo pip install docker-compose --ignore-installed PyYAML

Note that during the install, I did see these 2 errors:
ERROR: launchpadlib 1.10.7 requires testresources, which is not installed.
ERROR: docker-compose 1.25.0 has requirement PyYAML<5,>=3.10, but you'll have pyyaml 5.1.2 which is incompatible.

but that didn't stop docker-compose from installing successfully, and now I have:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ docker-compose --version
docker-compose version 1.25.0, build b42d419

and I just manually ran sudo pip install testresources after. Hope this helps!

[Rohan Sawant]

Oh, on Ubuntu 19?

I had not thought it would work with that. Cool that you manage to get it working!

[Rohan Sawant]

I just tested everything on a fresh Raspbian Buster build on a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and it indeed needed a few changes.

sudo apt-get remove python-configparser

Thanks to @dbrosy and @vegasbrianc for pointing it out.

[Andreas Heil]

Thanks for this hint! I literally tried each and every approach I found. Installing the dependencies fixed my issue with docker-compose 1.25 on Raspberry Pi 4 and Ubuntu Server on it!

[Meir Gabay]

Tested on

Model: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 4GBRAM
MicroSD: Sandisk 32GB
OS: Raspbian Buster with desktop
Flashed OS App: Balena Etcher

Thank you Rohan

[Alkin Tezuysal]

My docker-compose step fails as follows;
Exception: Version mismatch: this is the 'cffi' package version 1.13.2, located in '/tmp/pip-build-mJ6FCD/pynacl/cffi-1.13.2-py2.7-linux-armv7l.egg/cffi/api.pyc'. When we import the top-level '_cffi_backend' extension module, we get version 1.9.1, located in '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/_cffi_backend.arm-linux-gnueabihf.so'. The two versions should be equal; check your installation.

Any help appreciated.

[Alkin Tezuysal]

sudo pip3 install cffi==1.13.2 solved but there are other dependencies.

[fred-c1]

Thanks.
Tested today.
Raspberry pi 3B+ with Raspbian Buster Lite

I had to switch to python3/pip3 to install docker compose.
The message just before the error was:
setuptools requires Python '>=3.5' but the running Python is 2.7.16

Solution:
1 = make python3 the default python => search google
2 = sudo apt-get install -y python3-pip "3" !!!
3 = sudo pip3 install docker-compose "3" !!!

[Marcel Zuidwijk ]

Yep, got this error too and that indeed was the solution. The strange part is that it did worked, till about one or two weeks ago. Now I use this:

$ curl -sSL get.docker.com | sh
$ sudo usermod -aG docker pi
$ sudo apt-get install libffi-dev libssl-dev
$ sudo apt-get install -y python3 python3-pip
$ sudo apt-get remove python-configparser (apparently this isn't installed by using my commands on a clean install)
$ sudo pip3 install docker-compose

[Rohan Sawant]

Updated the post to reflect this. Thanks!

[svanzon]

Hi, thanks for you post.

I'm starting to work with Docker and Docker-compose but can't install the docker-compose.

My configuration is:

• RaspberryPi 3+
• Raspbian Full Stretch and Buster (tried both with a clean install)

The hello-world docker runs without errors. So docker is installed.

But with the last command "sudo pip install docker-compose" There is an error end I don't know how too solve it. Looked around at the internet and trying Stretch and Buster version of Raspbian. Can you help me.

setuptools requires Python '>=3.5' but the running Python is 2.7.16

Command "/usr/bin/python -m pip install --ignore-installed --no-user --prefix /tmp/pip-build-env-1XaNDC --no-warn-script-location --no-binary :none: --only-binary :none: -i https://pypi.org/simple --extra-index-url https://www.piwheels.org/simple -- setuptools>=40.8.0 wheel "cffi>=1.1; python_implementation != 'PyPy'"" failed with error code 1 in None

[Thordur Thordarson]

Finally a solution that works for me after looking everywhere. Thank you, sir!

[Rick Broberg]

If you amend step 2 to include

newgrp docker

then you don't need to reboot or use 'sudo docker' while you're in that shell.

Also, if you amend step 4 to include '-y' in your 'apt-get install' lines it is more friendly to copy/paste. Everybody is going to answer 'y to the installation question anyway.

[Ben Mitchinson]

Worked on first try as of March 2020 Rasp Buster Lite, thank you!

Also, the build step for bdist_wheel to run setup.py takes a pi 3 b+ like 12 minutes, so know that it's not broken if that's taking a while. CPU gets pretty hot, recommend rebooting and letting it cool for a while.