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Installing Docker

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David Anderson edited this page Mar 28, 2025 · 13 revisions

Docker is a system that makes it easy for BOINC projects to run their applications on Windows and Mac as well as Linux computers. This is like virtual machines (VMs) but is more efficient and easier to use.

In the future, many BOINC projects will use Docker to package their apps. To run them, you'll need to have Docker installed on your computer.

Eventually we hope to include Docker in the BOINC installer. For now, you need to install it yourself. It's easy, and we strongly encourage you to do it.

Note: Docker itself is a commercial product. Podman is a free open-source drop-in replacement for Docker. You can install either one, and BOINC will use it. We recommend using Podman because it's free and easier to install.

Windows

On Windows 10 you first need to enable WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux):

  • click in the Windows search bar (lower left corner)
  • click 'Control Panel'
  • click 'Programs and Features'
  • click 'Turn Windows features on or off'
  • check the box for 'Windows Subsystem for Linux'
  • click OK
  • Restart the computer

(on Windows 11 WSL is already enabled).

Now download this file and open it. This will create a WSL Linux image on your computer that BOINC will use to run Docker.

Restart your computer and run BOINC. You should see something like

3/25/2025 3:15:16 PM |  | Usable WSL distros:
3/25/2025 3:15:16 PM |  | -   Ubuntu (WSL 2) (default)
3/25/2025 3:15:16 PM |  | -      OS: Ubuntu (Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS)
3/25/2025 3:15:16 PM |  | -      libc version: 2.39
3/25/2025 3:15:16 PM |  | -      Docker version 4.9.3 (podman)

Linux

To install Podman on Debian/Ubuntu:

apt-get install podman

On Red Hat:

yum install podman

Mac

To install Podman, go to https://github.com/containers/podman/releases. The latest version is at the top.

For Apple Silicon Macs, download podman-installer-macos-arm64.pkg

For Intel Macs, download podman-installer-macos-arm64.pkg

Double-click on the file. At the end of installation it will tell you to run

podman machine init
podman machine start

You can do this (in a terminal window) if you want, but you don't have to; the BOINC client will do it when it start up.

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