Installing Docker Compose in CoreOS

October 20, 2015 | 1 Minute Read

With the acquisition of Fig, it is really cool now that Docker has a new tool docker-compose that allows you to use docker on multiple docker containers all at once.

Can Docker Compose be used in CoreOS? It is interesting that most people believe that Docker Compose can’t be installed in CoreOS because it has a readable-only user filesystem. But the answer is, YES, Docker Compose can be installed and then used in CoreOS.

So here are the instructions. Prepare a CoreOS machine first.

Enter root mode:

sudo su -

Create the necessary writable directories for installation of docker-compose:

mkdir /opt/
mkdir /opt/bin

Download/install docker-compose: You may replace “1.4.0” with any version of docker-compose you would like to install.

curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.4.0/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` > /opt/bin/docker-compose

Make the docker-compose binary executable.

chmod +x /opt/bin/docker-compose

Exit root mode:

exit

That’s it. You may now use docker-compose directly in the command line.