Install Portainer CE with Docker on Linux

{% hint style="info" %} These installation instructions are for Portainer Community Edition (CE). For Portainer Business Edition (BE) refer to the BE install documentation. {% endhint %}

Introduction

Portainer consists of two elements, the Portainer Server, and the Portainer Agent. Both elements run as lightweight Docker containers on a Docker engine. This document will help you install the Portainer Server container on your Linux environment. To add a new Linux environment to an existing Portainer Server installation, please refer to the Portainer Agent installation instructions.

To get started, you will need:

The latest version of Docker installed and working. We recommend following the official installation instructions for Docker - in particular, we advise against installing Docker via snap on Ubuntu distributions as you may run into compatibility issues.
sudo access on the machine that will host your Portainer Server instance
By default, Portainer Server will expose the UI over port 9443 and expose a TCP tunnel server over port 8000. The latter is optional and is only required if you plan to use the Edge compute features with Edge agents.

The installation instructions also make the following assumptions about your environment:

Your environment meets our requirements. While Portainer may work with other configurations, it may require configuration changes or have limited functionality.
You are accessing Docker via Unix sockets. Alternatively, you can also connect via TCP.
SELinux is disabled on the machine running Docker. If you require SELinux, you will need to pass the --privileged flag to Docker when deploying Portainer.
Docker is running as root. Portainer with rootless Docker has some limitations, and requires additional configuration.

Deployment

You can choose to deploy Portainer using docker run or via Docker Compose.

{% tabs %} {% tab title="docker run" %} To install using docker run, first create the volume that Portainer Server will use to store its database:

bash

docker volume create portainer_data

Then, download and install the Portainer Server container:

docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9443:9443 --name portainer --restart=always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v portainer_data:/data portainer/portainer-ce:sts

{% hint style="info" %} By default, Portainer generates and uses a self-signed SSL certificate to secure port 9443. Alternatively you can provide your own SSL certificate during installation or via the Portainer UI after installation is complete. {% endhint %}

{% hint style="info" %} If you require HTTP port 9000 open for legacy reasons, add the following to your docker run command:

-p 9000:9000 {% endhint %}

Portainer Server has now been installed. You can check to see whether the Portainer Server container has started by running docker ps:

bash

root@server:~# docker ps
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                        COMMAND        CREATED         STATUS         PORTS                                                                                                NAMES
7963585688a9   portainer/portainer-ce:sts   "/portainer"   8 seconds ago   Up 8 seconds   0.0.0.0:8000->8000/tcp, [::]:8000->8000/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9443->9443/tcp, [::]:9443->9443/tcp, 9000/tcp   portainer

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Docker Compose" %} To install using Docker Compose, download the compose file using the following curl command:

curl -L https://downloads.portainer.io/ce-sts/portainer-compose.yaml -o portainer-compose.yaml

Alternatively, create a portainer-compose.yaml file with the following contents:

services:
  portainer:
    container_name: portainer
    image: portainer/portainer-ce:sts
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - portainer_data:/data
    ports:
      - 9443:9443
      - 8000:8000  # Remove if you do not intend to use Edge Agents

volumes:
  portainer_data:
    name: portainer_data

networks:
  default:
    name: portainer_network

Once you have created or downloaded the compose file, you can deploy it with the following command:

docker compose -f portainer-compose.yaml up -d

Docker Compose will create the necessary resources and deploy Portainer. You can check to see whether the Portainer Server container has started by running docker ps:

root@server:~# docker ps
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                        COMMAND        CREATED         STATUS         PORTS                                                                                                NAMES
7963585688a9   portainer/portainer-ce:sts   "/portainer"   8 seconds ago   Up 8 seconds   0.0.0.0:8000->8000/tcp, [::]:8000->8000/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9443->9443/tcp, [::]:9443->9443/tcp, 9000/tcp   portainer

{% endtab %} {% endtabs %}

Logging In

Now that the installation is complete, you can log into your Portainer Server instance by opening a web browser and going to:

bash

https://localhost:9443

Replace localhost with the relevant IP address or FQDN if needed, and adjust the port if you changed it earlier.

You will be presented with the initial setup page for Portainer Server.

{% content-ref url="../setup.md" %} setup.md {% endcontent-ref %}