Install Docker Engine on existing Ubuntu VM

I have Windows 10 host OS, with a Virtualbox Ubuntu 16.04 Desktop VM running with development tools etc.

Am I able to install docker engine/daemon on my existing VM and connect to it/use it from Windows 10, or use it with the VM?

Hopefully that makes sense, let me know if you need more details.

This is very similar to the “normal” Docker Machine setup. You should absolutely be able to install Docker on to the VM, and use it like any other service running on the VM: you can run docker commands from a shell on the VM, and anything you e.g. docker run -p 8888:80 you can access from the host at http://172.16.x.x:8888/ where the 172.16.x.x address is the IP address of your VM, and 8888 is the published port number.

You probably won’t be able to run Docker commands directly from the Windows host, and I gather from the forum that native Windows (beta) Docker has some ability to run Windows-based applications in containers, which I presume also won’t work in a Linux environment.

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Thanks @dmaze for the details. :slight_smile: