Ferrodock's own engine

On a Mac with Apple Silicon, on Windows and on Linux, Ferrodock can run Docker by itself, with nothing else installed.

Setting it up

When Ferrodock finds no Docker engine, it shows No Docker engine yet. Click Set up Ferrodock's engine. Ferrodock downloads the engine once, checks it, and starts it. From then on:

• it starts when Ferrodock opens (unless you turn that off in Settings → Startup), and stops when you quit Ferrodock;
• it shows up as Ferrodock in the engine list, so you can switch to and from it at any time;
• images, containers and volumes you create in it are kept between runs.

The first start can take a minute. Ferrodock connects as soon as the engine is up.

macOS

On Apple Silicon Macs the engine is a small Linux VM with the Docker engine inside, run through Apple's Virtualization framework at native speed. The download is about 120 MB.

• Everything lives in ~/.ferrodock: the engine image, its data disk (images, containers and volumes; it only takes the space it uses) and the engine's log, console.log.

• The VM gets half your CPU cores (between 2 and 8) and 4 GB of memory.

• Your home folder is shared with the engine at the same path, so bind mounts such as -v ~/project:/app work as you'd expect. Folders outside your home folder aren't shared.

• The docker command can use it too:

  export DOCKER_HOST=unix://$HOME/.ferrodock/docker.sock

Intel Macs can't run Ferrodock's engine; Ferrodock connects to another Docker engine there. See Connecting to other engines.

Windows

On Windows the engine is a WSL distro called ferrodock. WSL is part of Windows; if it isn't turned on yet, run this once in a terminal opened as administrator, then restart:

wsl --install

• Everything lives in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Ferrodock: the distro's disk (images, containers and volumes) and the engine's log, console.log.

• Ferrodock talks to the engine privately, through WSL itself: no network port is opened.

• Ferrodock offers the engine on the named pipe npipe:////./pipe/ferrodock_engine. When nothing else uses Docker's usual pipe (docker_engine), it serves that one too, so the docker command works with no setup. Otherwise, point it at Ferrodock's:

  docker context create ferrodock --docker host=npipe:////./pipe/ferrodock_engine
  docker context use ferrodock

• The engine trusts the certificates Windows trusts, so pulling images works behind company proxies that inspect TLS traffic.

• Your drives are in the engine under /mnt, so for bind mounts use paths such as -v /mnt/c/Users/me/project:/app.

Linux

Docker runs natively on Linux, so there's no VM: Ferrodock's engine is the Docker engine itself, run as a system service called ferrodock-engine.

• Setting it up downloads the engine once (about 70 MB) and asks for your admin password, because the Docker engine runs as root on Linux. You're asked only this once.
• It has its own socket, /run/ferrodock/docker.sock, which your user can use without sudo; its own data folder, /var/lib/ferrodock; and its programs in /opt/ferrodock/engine/bin. It doesn't touch another Docker installation.
• Like Docker on Linux, it starts with your computer and keeps running when you quit Ferrodock, so your containers keep running too.
• Published ports are on localhost, as usual on Linux.
• The docker command can use it: export DOCKER_HOST=unix:///run/ferrodock/docker.sock.
• Its log: journalctl -u ferrodock-engine.

If Docker is already installed as the docker service, Ferrodock uses that instead and only offers its own engine when there's nothing else.

Removing the engine

Quit Ferrodock first, so the engine is stopped.

• macOS: delete the ~/.ferrodock folder.
• Windows: run wsl --unregister ferrodock, then delete the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Ferrodock folder.
• Linux: run sudo systemctl disable --now ferrodock-engine && sudo rm -rf /etc/systemd/system/ferrodock-engine.service /opt/ferrodock /var/lib/ferrodock.

This deletes every image, container and volume in Ferrodock's engine. You can set it up again at any time.