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How To Install and Run PostgreSQL using Docker ?

ShreeJ on September 14, 2020

Installing, running and managing postgres in local-machine for development is not difficult anymore. Here is a simple way to get all at one place e...

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Ghazi Khan • Sep 15 '20

Hi thanks for this article but when I do this. PGAdmin gets installed and started but when I try to access it on browser with localhost:5050 but it is not working. It shows site can't be reached.

ShreeJ • Sep 16 '20 • Edited

Ensure the docker container is up and running :
docker ps -a

Ghazi Khan • Sep 16 '20

Yes it is running and shows that open 0.0.0.0: , but still not able to access on browser.

Prabhakar Pandey • Dec 29 '20

It looks like you missed to give port while running the pgadmin ?

Ghazi Khan • Dec 29 '20

I have given the port too, still it doesn't work.

Rajendra Gosavi • Oct 19 '21

you are missing. -d flag. the in order to run in deamon mode you need to dive -d flag -
docker run --rm -d -p 5050:5050 thajeztah/pgadmin4

Arc • Sep 14 '20

Thats really well written, good job 👏

Marcos Rezende • Sep 15 '20

Hey great article! But why not use Docker for production environment?!

ShreeJ • Sep 16 '20

Its not about using docker for production environment.
As the DB is hosted in a container and not attached to any volume, once we delete the container (like docker rm <container_id>), the data in DB will be lost permanently.
Which will not be the way a production app should work.

Dwayne Bradley • Sep 17 '20

I agree with Marcos...nice article J Shree! :-)

It might also be helpful to show folks how to save their data even after running docker rm <container_id>. This is how I normally accomplish this:

First, create a local directory to hold the data:

mkdir -p /home/<your_user_id_here>/pgdata

Then start PostgreSQL using a volume mount so the container will store the data in this newly created local directory:

docker run \
  -d \
  --name postgresql-container \
  -p 5432:5432 \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=somePassword \
  -v /home/<your_user_id_here>/pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data \
  postgres

Using this method, you can be safe in knowing that even if you accidentally run docker rm <container_id> that you can restart PostgreSQL again and have all of you data just as you left it previously.

Hope this helps!

Onen Lawrence Lakuma • Mar 16 '21

The reason you have to create a volume (which is mapped to your container) is to locally persist your data so that in the event you stop/restart your container, you can always have your data. So, your database stays though you will need the container running in order to access it.