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linuxubuntudockerboot2docker

Ubuntu based docker-machine image

Is there a possibility to simply create a docker-machine that is non-boot2docker based (i.e., Ubuntu based) (which uses virtualbox driver)?

I would like to have full-featured Linux distro running the docker daemon on my mac instead of Tiny Core Linux distro which is fast and lightweight but doesn't offer me all the debugging facilities I need.

I know I can create it manually. I'm just wondering if there is a simple way such as docker-machine create is.

Solution

  • You could take advantage of the --virtualbox-boot2docker-url option.
    This issue illustrates its usage (with an iso which is not a TinyCore one, but a RancherOS one)

    docker-machine create -d virtualbox --virtualbox-boot2docker-url https://releases.rancher.com/os/latest/machine-rancheros.iso rancher

    If RancherOS is a bit too bare, you can take some clues from how boot2docker is currently built, and build your own distro.

    The key is to remove the parts not needed in order to be able to launch headless VM without using too much memory.

    # Remove useless kernel modules, based on unclejack/debian2docker 
RUN cd $ROOTFS/lib/modules && \
rm -rf ./*/kernel/sound/* && \
rm -rf ./*/kernel/drivers/gpu/* && \
...