How to Install Portainer Docker UI Web Interface on Debian 11

Portainer is a lightweight, free, open-source Docker management UI that allows you to manage your Docker container from a web browser. It provides a simple and user-friendly web interface to build and manage containers, images, networks, volumes, registries, services, and nodes. Portainer is a very useful tool for users who don’t know the Linux command line.

In this post, we will show you how to install Portainer Docker UI on Debian 11.

Prerequisites

A server running Debian 11 on the Atlantic.Net Cloud Platform
A root password configured on your server

Step 1 – Create Atlantic.Net Cloud Server

First, log in to your Atlantic.Net Cloud Server. Create a new server, choosing Debian 11 as the operating system with at least 4GB RAM. Connect to your Cloud Server via SSH and log in using the credentials highlighted at the top of the page.

Once you are logged in to your server, run the following command to update your base system with the latest available packages.

apt-get update -y

Step 2 – Install Docker CE

Before installing Portainer, Docker CE must be installed on your server. You can install Docker CE by following the below steps:

First, install the required dependencies using the following command:

apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gnupg2 software-properties-common

Next, add the Docker CE repository with the following command:

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \
  $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

Next, update the repository and install Docker CE with the following command:

apt-get update -y
apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io -y

Once Docker is installed, verify the Docker installation using the following command:

docker version

You should see the following output:

Client: Docker Engine - Community
 Version:           20.10.12
 API version:       1.41
 Go version:        go1.16.12
 Git commit:        e91ed57
 Built:             Mon Dec 13 11:45:48 2021
 OS/Arch:           linux/amd64
 Context:           default
 Experimental:      true

Server: Docker Engine - Community
 Engine:
  Version:          20.10.12
  API version:      1.41 (minimum version 1.12)
  Go version:       go1.16.12
  Git commit:       459d0df
  Built:            Mon Dec 13 11:43:56 2021
  OS/Arch:          linux/amd64
  Experimental:     false
 containerd:
  Version:          1.4.12
  GitCommit:        7b11cfaabd73bb80907dd23182b9347b4245eb5d
 runc:
  Version:          1.0.2
  GitCommit:        v1.0.2-0-g52b36a2
 docker-init:
  Version:          0.19.0
  GitCommit:        de40ad0

Step 3 – Install Docker Compose

You will also need to install Docker Compose to your system. First, download the latest version of Docker Compose binary using the following command:

wget https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.2.2/docker-compose-linux-x86_64

Next, copy the downloaded binary to the system path:

cp docker-compose-linux-x86_64 /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Next, set executable permissions to the Docker Compose binary:

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

Next, verify the Docker Compose installation using the following command:

docker-compose --version

You should see the following output:

Docker Compose version v2.2.2

Step 4 – Install Portainer UI

First, create a volume to store Portainer data using the following command:

docker volume create portainer_data

Next, run the following command to download the Portainer image from the Docker Hub registry, create a container, and expose the container on port 9000:

docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9000:9000 --name=portainer --restart=always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v portainer_data:/data portainer/portainer

You should see the following output:

Unable to find image 'portainer/portainer:latest' locally
latest: Pulling from portainer/portainer
94cfa856b2b1: Pull complete 
49d59ee0881a: Pull complete 
a2300fd28637: Pull complete 
Digest: sha256:fb45b43738646048a0a0cc74fcee2865b69efde857e710126084ee5de9be0f3f
Status: Downloaded newer image for portainer/portainer:latest
69d06a5c41851cc85df1924aa77566d2f38978faad5c27f52e089af8a0dc931e

You can verify the running container using the following command:

docker ps

You should see the following output:

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                 COMMAND        CREATED          STATUS          PORTS                                                                                  NAMES
69d06a5c4185   portainer/portainer   "/portainer"   12 seconds ago   Up 11 seconds   0.0.0.0:8000->8000/tcp, :::8000->8000/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9000->9000/tcp, :::9000->9000/tcp   portainer

Step 5 – Access Portainer UI

Now, open your web browser and access the Portainer UI using the URL http://your-server-ip:9000. You should see the following page:
Portainer password set page
Set your admin user and password and click on the Create user button. You will be asked to select the Docker environment that you want to manage:
Portainer select docker environment
Select the local environment and click on the Connect button. You should see the Portainer UI on the following page:
Portainer dashboard

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Portainer UI on Debian 11. You can now create, deploy and manage Docker containers from a web browser. Try it on dedicated hosting from Atlantic.Net!

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