How to use the Docker blueprint

The Docker blueprint gives Multipass users an easy way to create Ubuntu instances with Docker installed. It is based on the latest LTS release of Ubuntu, and includes docker engine and Portainer. The Docker blueprint automatically aliases the docker and docker-compose commands to your host, and creates a workspace that is shared between the host and the instance.

To use the Docker blueprint, run multipass launch docker, which will launch an instance with default parameters.

Next, follow the instructions in the output to add the aliased command to your path, it should look something like this:

You'll need to add this to your shell configuration (.bashrc, .zshrc or so) for

aliases to work without prefixing with `multipass`:

PATH="$PATH:/home/user/snap/multipass/common/bin"

Running which docker from your host command line should confirm that you are running Docker inside Multipass.

To access Portainer, run multipass ls and copy the IP address of the multipass instance (the first in the list), then enter it into your browser followed by a colon and Portainer’s port number, 9000 (something like this: 10.21.145.191:9000). This gives you Portainer’s web interface for visually managing your containers.

You can mount files into this instance as with any Multipass instance, but the default shared workspace is an easy way to edit your dockerfiles and docker-compose.yaml files from your host. With working directory mapping, you can run the docker-compose command from your host inside the shared directory, and have it run within that same directory in your Multipass instance.


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