Working with Oracle Linux 8, Podman, and Docker Compose

In this blog post I will share how to configure an Oracle Linux 8.9 server and Podman to work with Docker Compose.

Docker Compose is a command-line tool used for defining and the running single, or multi-container applications. 

Docker Compose simplifies the management of the entire application stack, making it easy to manage services, networks, and volumes all from a single, easy to read YAML (Yet-Another-Markup-Language) formatted file.

Install and confirm Podman installed

Install the Podman package if not already installed, using the below.

sudo dnf module install container-tools:ol8

Check the version of Podman using podman -v for example.

podman -v

[oracle@z-re-ol8 ~]$ podman -v
podman version 4.6.1

Confirm the Podman CLI is working ok.

 podman run quay.io/podman/hello

[oracle@z-re-ol8 ~]$ podman run quay.io/podman/hello
Trying to pull quay.io/podman/hello:latest...
Getting image source signatures
Copying blob f05aaddf8ce5 done
Copying config ee835612d4 done
Writing manifest to image destination
!... Hello Podman World ...!

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Project:   https://github.com/containers/podman
Website:   https://podman.io
Desktop:   https://podman-desktop.io
Documents: https://docs.podman.io
YouTube:   https://youtube.com/@Podman
X/Twitter: @Podman_io
Mastodon:  @Podman_io@fosstodon.org

Install the Podman Docker Package

Install the podman docker package to allow Podman to work natively with Docker commands.

sudo dnf install -y podman-docker

Install Docker Compose

Download and install Compose standalone.

sudo curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.15.1/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

[oracle@z-re-ol8 ~]$ sudo curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.15.1/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
100 42.8M  100 42.8M    0     0  26.4M      0  0:00:01  0:00:01 --:--:-- 79.2M

Add executable permissions to docker-compose.

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Confirm docker-compose is working

docker-compose version

[oracle@z-re-ol8 ~]$ docker-compose version
Docker Compose version v2.15.1

Start the Podman Socket

Configure the Podman socket using the below.

sudo systemctl enable --now podman.socket
sudo systemctl status podman.socket

[oracle@z-re-ol8 ~]$ sudo systemctl enable --now podman.socket
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/sockets.target.wants/podman.socket → /usr/lib/systemd/system/podman.socket.

[oracle@z-re-ol8 ~]$ sudo systemctl status podman.socket
● podman.socket - Podman API Socket
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/podman.socket; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (listening) since Tue 2024-04-30 14:46:50 BST; 13s ago
     Docs: man:podman-system-service(1)
   Listen: /run/podman/podman.sock (Stream)
   CGroup: /system.slice/podman.socket

Apr 30 14:46:50 z-re-ol8.uklab.purestorage.com systemd[1]: Listening on Podman API Socket.

Check that the socket works as expected using curl.

[oracle@z-re-ol8 ~]$ sudo curl -w "\n" -H "Content-Type: application/json" --unix-socket /var/run/docker.sock http://localhost/_ping
OK

If the Curl returns OK, then the compose functionality is successfully configured to work with docker-compose.yaml files.

In a follow-up post I share how we can use the above to deploy the Unified Observability for Oracle database using docker-compose.