Install Portainer to handle your Docker administration

Portainer is a tool that can help you manage your docker containers through a nice web UI. You can install Portainer itself through Docker Compose.

First, make sure you have docker installed, including docker-compose. If not, you can follow the instructions here: https://alexmihai.rocks/2024/10/07/install-docker-on-your-ubuntu-home-server/ .

Copy this docker-compose.yml file to a folder on the machine you wish to install it on:

services:
  portainer:
    image: portainer/portainer-ce:2.21.3
    container_name: portainer
    ports:
      - 9000:9000
    volumes:
      - portainer-data:/data
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  portainer-data: {}

From the the folder where you saved the docker-compose.yml file, run the following command:

$ docker compose up -d
[+] Running 12/12
  portainer Pulled
    2fdd3e02e7e5 Pull complete
    3745b0e5e59c Pull complete
    39b5457baa4a Pull complete
    27fb5b6e87d5 Pull complete
    ad26f2495f3e Pull complete
    25275c19b336 Pull complete
    8d194017ae2a Pull complete
    5fa054b5db51 Pull complete
    f18343ae30bb Pull complete
    21e9421a9e7c Pull complete
    4f4fb700ef54 Pull complete
[+] Running 3/3
  Network portainer_default          Created
  Volume "portainer_portainer-data"  Created
  Container portainer                Started

Once started, you can access the UI at http://<hostname/ip>:9000/, where on the first access you will be asked to set a password for the admin user. If you installed it on your local machine, it will be at http://localhost:9000/, otherwise use the hostname or IP of the machine where you installed.

If you wait too long before setting the password, you’ll get a message like: Your Portainer instance timed out for security purposes. To re-enable your Portainer instance, you will need to restart Portainer.

In that case, from the command line you can run:

$ docker compose down
$ docker compose up -d

Then access the web UI again.

Hope this helps, have fun clickity-clacking.