John Siu Blog

It is easy to install Docker in Alpine as packages are readily available. But what about Docker-Machine without VirtualBox?

Install Docker Machine

Following official instruction work perfectly:

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base=https://github.com/docker/machine/releases/download/v0.16.0 &&
curl -L $base/docker-machine-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m) >/tmp/docker-machine &&
sudo install /tmp/docker-machine /usr/local/bin/docker-machine

Check version:

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$ docker-machine version
docker-machine version 0.16.0, build 702c267f

Docker KVM Driver

Docker site only give VirtualBox example:

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docker-machine create --driver virtualbox myvm

There is a driver list if you dig deeper but none is for KVM. dhiltgen on github created one but stopped maintaining it, and it has issue¹ with the latest docker image used by docker machine. The current working driver is from tdilauro’s fork and you can install it as below:

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curl -L https://github.com/tdilauro/docker-machine-kvm/releases/download/v0.10.1/docker-machine-driver-kvm-alpine3.4 > /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-kvm

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-kvm

This fork added the --kvm-nic-type option to allow one to specify virtio during the creation process. Then you can create docker machine like this:

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docker-machine create --driver kvm --kvm-nic-type virtio myKvm