How To Install Docker Compose on Debian 9 Stretch

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Docker Compose on Debian 9 Stretch server. For those of you who didn’t know, Docker is an open-source project that automates the deployment of the application inside the software container. The container allows the developer to package up all project resources such as libraries, dependencies, assets, etc. Docker is written in a Go Programming language and is developed by Dotcloud. It is basically a container engine that uses the Linux Kernel features like namespaces and control groups to create containers on top of an operating system and automates the application deployment on the container.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of Docker Compose the latest version on a Debian 9 (Stretch) server.

Install Docker Compose on Debian 9 Stretch

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing Docker on Debian.

On Linux systems, first, install the Docker for your OS as described on the Get Docker page, then come back here for instructions on installing Compose on Linux systems.

Step 3. Install Docker Compose on Debian 9.

First, install Docker Compose from Docker’s GitHub repository:

sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.23.1/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Next, we’ll set the permissions:

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

Verify the installation:

docker-compose --version

Step 4. Running Container with Docker Compose.

In this section we will show how to use Docker Compose to manage WordPress on your Linux Debian 9 system:

mkdir wordpress_app
cd wordpress_app

Open your text editor (nano) and create a file named docker-compose.yml inside the project directory:

nano docker-compose.yml

Add the following content:

version: '3.3'

services:
  db:
    image: mysql:5.7
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - db_data:/var/lib/mysql
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: password
      MYSQL_DATABASE: wordpress

  wordpress:
    image: wordpress
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - ./wp_data:/var/www/html
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    environment:
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: db:3306
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: wordpress
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: root
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: password
    depends_on:
       - db

volumes:
    db_data:
    wp_data:

From the project directory, start up the WordPress application by running the following command:

docker-compose up

Then, Enter http://0.0.0.0:8080/ in your browser and you will see the WordPress installation screen.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Docker Compose. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Docker Compose on Debian 9 Stretch server. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Docker website.