Docker in Ubuntu, Ubuntu in Docker

This article is cross-posted on Docker's blog as well.

There is a design pattern, occasionally found in nature, when some of the most elegant and impressive solutions often seem so intuitive, in retrospect.

For me, Docker is just that sort of game changing, hyper-innovative technology, that, at its core,  somehow seems straightforward, beautiful, and obvious.

Linux containers, repositories of popular base images, snapshots using modern copy-on-write filesystem features.  Brilliant, yet so simple.  Docker.io for the win!

I clearly recall nine long months ago, intrigued by a fervor of HackerNews excitement pulsing around a nascent Docker technology.  I followed a set of instructions on a very well designed and tastefully manicured web page, in order to launch my first Docker container.  Something like: start with Ubuntu 13.04, downgrade the kernel, reboot, add an out-of-band package repository, install an oddly named package, import some images, perhaps debug or ignore some errors, and then launch.  In few moments, I could clearly see the beginnings of a brave new world of lightning fast, cleanly managed, incrementally saved, highly dense, operating system containers.

Ubuntu inside of Ubuntu, Inception style.  So.  Much.  Potential.

Fast forward to today -- April 18, 2014 -- and the combination of Docker and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS has raised the bar, introducing a new echelon of usability and convenience, and coupled with the trust and track record of enterprise grade Long Term Support from Canonical and the Ubuntu community.

Big thanks, by the way, to Paul Tagliamonte, upstream Debian packager of Docker.io, as well as all of the early testers and users of Docker during the Ubuntu development cycle.

Docker is now officially in Ubuntu.  That makes Ubuntu 14.04 LTS the first enterprise grade Linux distribution to ship with Docker natively packaged, continuously tested, and instantly installable.  Millions of Ubuntu servers are now never more than three commands away from launching or managing Linux container sandboxes, thanks to Docker.

sudo apt-get install docker.io
sudo docker.io pull ubuntu
sudo docker.io run -i -t ubuntu /bin/bash

And after that last command, Ubuntu is now running within Docker, inside of a Linux container.

Brilliant.

Simple.

Elegant.

User friendly.

Just the way we've been doing things in Ubuntu for nearly a decade. Thanks to our friends at Docker.io!

Cheers,

:-Dustin

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS -- Security for Human Beings

In about an hour, I have the distinct honor to address a room full of federal sector security researchers and scientists at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Labs, within the Cyber and Information Security Research Conference.

I'm delighted to share with you the slide deck I have prepared for this presentation.  You can download a PDF here.

To a great extent, I have simply reformatted the excellent Ubuntu Security Features wiki page our esteemed Ubuntu Security Team maintains, into a format by which I can deliver as a presentation.

Hopefully you'll learn something!  I certainly did, as I researched and built this presentation ;-)

On a related security note, it's probably worth mentioning that Canonical's IS team have updated all SSL services with patched OpenSSL from the Ubuntu security archive, and have restarted all relevant services (using Landscape, for the win), against the Heartbleed vulnerability. I will release an updated pollinate package in a few minutes, to ship the new public key for entropy.ubuntu.com.

Stay safe,
Dustin