Docker Toolbox for Windows and Windows Subsystem for Linux (aka Bash on Windows)

install_WSL_docker.sh

#
# This script installs and configures WSL to work with Docker Toolbox for Windows.
# 1. Install WSL (check out [bowinstaller](https://github.com/xezpeleta/bowinstaller) for programmatic installation.
# 2. Run the contents of this script in Bash. (copy and paste works fine, no need to save)
#
sudo -sEH << 'EOM'
# Install the docker client and docker-compose
apt-get update && apt-get install -y curl ca-certificates
curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh
curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.11.1/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
# Add the current user to the docker group.
usermod -aG docker $(id -un)
# Symlink /c/ to /mnt/c/ as Docker Toolbox is expects /c/ path mappings.
[[ ! -e /c/ ]] && ln -s /mnt/c /
EOM

#Set docker-machine to run on terminal start.
cat >> ~/.bashrc << 'EOM'
   # Start the docker machine
  export VBOX_MSI_INSTALL_PATH='/c/Program Files/Oracle/VirtualBox/'
  pushd '/c/Program Files/Docker Toolbox/' > /dev/null
  ./start.sh exit
  # Get env variables from docker-machine, convert paths, ignore comments, and strip double quotes. 
  $(./docker-machine.exe env --shell bash | sed 's/C:/\/c/' | sed 's/\\/\//g' | sed 's:#.*$::g' | sed 's/"//g' )
  popd > /dev/null
  # Change /mnt/c/ to /c/ in current working directory path
  cd $(pwd | sed 's/\/mnt\/c\//\/c\//')
EOM

Getting
Could not read CA certificate "/home/schenkj/.docker/ca.pem": open /home/schenkj/.docker/ca.pem: no such file or directory when running docker ps on WSL.

This is great! This might be a newb question, but how do I handle this?

$ docker ps
Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?

Update... I'm now up and running thanks to this script as well as this gist, and possibly another link I can't find right now.

I think these are all the steps that got me the rest of the way:

I added these to .bashrc (.zshrc in my case):

export DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY=0                                         
export DOCKER_HOST=tcp://$(cd /mnt/c && docker-machine.exe ip):2376

Then back in my terminal I ran these commands:

docker-machine.exe restart default
mkdir -p ~/.docker
ln -s /mnt/c/Users/John/.docker/machine/certs/ca.pem ~/.docker/ca.pem
ln -s /mnt/c/Users/John/.docker/machine/certs/ca-key.pem ~/.docker/ca-key.pem
ln -s /mnt/c/Users/John/.docker/machine/certs/cert.pem ~/.docker/cert.pem
ln -s /mnt/c/Users/John/.docker/machine/certs/key.pem ~/.docker/key.pem
docker-machine.exe upgrade

Finally I followed these instructions to get my DNS setup to use google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.8.4.

There is a nice docker-env wrapper script that does the ENV/export conversion (well enough, had no issues yet):
https://gist.github.com/mmarchini/bc9df7b82127fea13612edf8bffdf96f

I made a similar HOWTO (though inferior to this approach I think), maybe it is still helpful for you for fixing some other issues:
https://gist.github.com/strarsis/44ded0d254066d9cb125ebbb04650d6c

I am also having trouble with volumes. The files are missing when using docker-compose up. Example:

version: '3'
services:
  myservice:
    image: some/image
    build .
    volumes:
     - .:/usr/my-service
     - /usr/my-service/node_modules

Example Dockerfile:

FROM node:8.9.4-alpine

ENV HOME=/usr/my-service
RUN mkdir -p $HOME
WORKDIR $HOME

ADD package.json $HOME
ADD package-lock.json $HOME

RUN npm install --silent

ADD . $HOME

EXPOSE 8080

CMD npm run start:docker

Any ideas? /cc @fishnux @strarsis @jwilson8767

A recent commit in docker toolbox breaks this. Two changes in this commit are problematic.

1. They no longer hard-code the docker toolbox and docker-machine.exe paths. Simple fix is to do export DOCKER_TOOLBOX_INSTALL_PATH='/c/Program Files/Docker Toolbox' before calling ./start.sh exit.
2. On line 80 of the commit, they convert the exports to SETX syntax, which won't work in wsl. Not sure of a good fix for this. Personally, I just deleted the line from my start.sh, but I'd rather have a fix in my .bashrc without touching start.sh.

Unfortunately, start.sh uses a windows path to docker-machine.exe. I fixed it locally to use which to find the executable but then that exposed another issue: you cannot run docker-machine.exe commands without the variables set by docker-machine.exe --shell bash. So you can't run the command that sets the variables that you need to run the command.

source <(docker-machine.exe env default --shell bash | sed 's?\\?/?g;s?C:/?/mnt/c/?g') run this before docker-compose.