Basics

Docker + Dockge on a Alpine VM

Make it small, use Alpine images. The smallest of them all is probably Alpine. I also included notes on Dockge and Portainer. For most of my VM apps Alpine is more than enough. It's small because it's lacking the bloat from GNU.

Nalle

Mar 31, 2025 — 5 min read

Photo by Thomas Bühler / Unsplash

Install Alpine – 3.15 and newer

Current Alpine Version 3.21.3 (Released Feb 13, 2025)
Download the correct image to your storage, ISO or Template.
Then, set up your VM or CT. Start and login as root, no password. Follow the on-screen info and my notes below.

ℹ️

It's advisable to run docker on a VM. In the literature, Ubuntu is the far most recommended OS for a Docker VM.

Adding the community repo

If you need things like the QEMU-Guest-Agent or sudo, you need to activate the community repo. Edit the file vi /etc/apk/repositories and remove the # in front of the …/community lines, :wq to save.

Adding QEMU-Guest-Agent service

Use doas or install and use sudo – if you're not running as root.

Add stuff needed: apk add curl or apk add curl wget nano sudo
Add the package: apk add qemu-guest-agent
Start the service: rc-service qemu-guest-agent start
Enable the service on startup: rc-update add qemu-guest-agent
Restart the service: rc-service qemu-guest-agent restart

Adding a disk for the containers

Use doas or install and use sudo – if you're not running as root.

Format a disk:

Format the new disk e.g., by fdisk /dev/sdb add a partition by hitting n and p 1 and enter to First and Last sector, then hit w to write it all to the disk.

Create a file system

Create a file system on the new disk mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1 and reboot now.

Add a disk to fstab.

Change /opt to something (/srv ) and the 2 means it's required.

Find the UUID by blkid and vi/nano etc/fstab,
add it as UUID=<UUID> /opt ext4 defaults 0 2.

Expanding a disk.

First expand the allocated disk in your VM and then SSH in to the VM and do.

First sudo growpart /dev/sdb 1 --update auto
and then sudo resize2fs /dev/sdb1
Use df -h to check for success

Install Docker

Docker packages are in the community repo

Install Docker-ce: apk add docker
Add a user to the docker group: addgroup <username> docker
Start at boot: rc-update add docker default and service docker start
Docker compose: apk add docker-cli-compose

Docker rootless allows unprivileged users to run the docker daemon and docker containers in user namespaces.

apk add docker-rootless-extras and rc-update add cgroups
- see the Docker documentation for the rest
You might encounter this message when executing docker info.
To correct this situation, you must configure cgroups properly.
Create your external networks, one for external and one for internal traffic.
- docker network create -d bridge <external name>
- docker network create -d bridge <internal name>
Make the generic folders you need for your stacks

Install Dockge

Dockge is my favorite, but there is thing you benefit from also having Portainer.
Use doas or install and use sudo – if you're not running as root.

Create directories

Create directories that store your stacks and store Dockge's stack

doas mkdir -p /opt/stacks /opt/dockge && cd /opt/dockge

Download your compose.yaml

doas curl "https://dockge.kuma.pet/compose.yaml?port=5001&stacksPath=%2Fopt%2Fstacks" --output compose.yaml

services:
  dockge:
    image: louislam/dockge:1
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 5001:5001
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - ./data:/app/data
      # Stacks Directory
      # ⚠️ READ IT CAREFULLY. If you did it wrong, your data could end up writing into a WRONG PATH.
      # ⚠️ 1. FULL path only. No relative path (MUST)
      # ⚠️ 2. Left Stacks Path === Right Stacks Path (MUST)
      - /opt/stacks:/opt/stacks
    environment:
      # Tell Dockge where to find the stacks
      - DOCKGE_STACKS_DIR=/opt/stacks

Start the Server

Docker Compose V2

docker compose up -d

Podman

docker-compose up -d

Alternative, use docker run

doas docker run -d -p 5001:5001 --name Dockge --restart=unless-stopped -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v /home/$USER/docker/dockge/data:/app/data -v /home/$USER/docker/stacks:/home/$USER/docker/stacks -e DOCKGE_STACKS_DIR=/home/$USER/docker/stacks louislam/dockge:latest

Portainer

First, create the volume that Portainer Server will use to store its database:

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:latest

HTTP port 9000 open for legacy reasons, add : -p 9000:9000 to your docker run command

Point your browser to https://<ServerIP>:9443 and create your admin user.

Portainer stores the docker-compose files at /var/lib/docker/volumes/portainer_data/_data/compose/

References

Alpine ^[1] Docker ^[2] Dockge ^[3] Portainer ^[4]

Alpine homepage, getting started Download ↩︎
Docker homepage, getting started GitHub, official install Ubuntu, Documentation ↩︎
Dockge is a fancy, easy-to-use and readtive self-hosted docker compose.yml stack-oriented manager. GitHub
Note from the author: "Dockge" is a coinage word which is created by myself. I originally hoped it sounds like Dodge , but apparently many people called it Dockage, it is also acceptable. The naming idea came from Twitch emotes like sadge, bedge or wokege. ↩︎
Portainer is a self-hosted software that simplifies the deployment, monitoring, and security of Docker, Swarm, Kubernetes and Podman clusters. It supports multi-cluster and multi-device management, centralized access and authorization, and customizable policies and quotas. homepage ↩︎