How to enable Docker Remote API on Photon OS

So you want to connect to the Docker instance on Photon OS remotly from another Docker client? In this guide I will walk you through a few short steps to configure Photon OS to enable the remote docker API. NOTE: This is not considered the secure method. If you want to use encryption and secure connections I will have a follow up post on that soon.

Login to your Photon OS using SSH or open the console and type the following and press enter

systemctl stop docker
vi /etc/default/docker

Press i on the keyboard then enter the following, when done press the ESC key then hold Shift and press the Z key twice

DOCKER_OPTS="-H tcp://0.0.0.0:2375 -H unix:///var/run/docker.sock"

Since Photon OS uses IP tables we need to open that port, type the following and press enter

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 2375 -j ACCEPT

Now start docker with the following command and press enter

systemctl start docker

To test that it worked, open a web browser to the Photon OS at http://ipaddress:2375/info and you should see the following.

 Enjoy!
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6 Replies to “How to enable Docker Remote API on Photon OS”

  1. Pingback: Getting started with VMware Admiral Container Service on Photon OS – VMtoCloud.com

  2. Pingback: Getting started with VMware Admiral Container Service on Photon OS - Cloud-Native AppsCloud-Native Apps - VMware Blogs

  3. Very helpful post. One thing you might want to call out is the fact that that iptable rule will not persist after a reboot. In order for it to save (in case you’re preparing this as a Photon template), you might want to add that rule to /etc/systemd/scripts/iptables at the end of the file after the rule enabling SSH. From there, doing a “systemctl restart iptables” should pick up the rule, followed by an “iptables –list” to verify it was applied.

  4. Hi Ryan, I am trying to run Admiral container on my local Windows 10, version Docker version 1.12.3, build 6b644ec and then add my local server (happens to be on VMW corp network :), so need to enable Docker RemoteAPI here as well.

    How can I perform similar config changes to Docker Daemon which currently just has the following settings:
    {
    “registry-mirrors”: [],
    “insecure-registries”: [],
    “debug”: false
    }

    Not using Photon OS @ the moment, hence the question – thanks in advance!

    • Hi Daniel,

      Add this line before “registry-mirrors”: [],
      “-H tcp://0.0.0.0:2375 -H unix:///var/run/docker.sock”,

      It also may have changed to something like this in newer Docker versions

      {
      “hosts”: [“tcp://0.0.0.0:2375”, “unix:///var/run/docker.sock”]
      }

      Then restart the docker Daemon.

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