Install Docker

sudo yum update -y
sudo yum -y install docker

Start Docker

sudo service docker start

Access Docker commands in ec2-user user

sudo usermod -a -G docker ec2-user
sudo chmod 666 /var/run/docker.sock
docker version

I had the same goal of testing instances in development environment and initially I thought it should be as easy as docker run amazonlinux:2 -it. But I was so wrong and it took me almost one full day to get it to work!

Funny thing is when you google "amazonlinux Docker" it's often people trying to install "Docker in amazonlinux", but here we want to install "amazonlinux in Docker"!

We also want to install Docker in that amazonlinux, so basically "Docker in amazonlinux in Docker" which is "Docker in Docker" eventually! ;D*

My findings:

• Amazonlinux in Docker (created via FROM amazonlinux:2) is so bare and empty that it doesn't even have basic stuffs like sudo or passwd.) New AWS EC2 instances do.
• In order to have your serviced properly working (to start any daemon, including Docker Daemon), you need to have /usr/sbin/init be there (via yum install initscripts and actually called. However, the meat you want to play with need your shell to start from /bin/bash.
• You are running a Docker within a Docker. That needs to be priviledged from the host in your docker run via --priviledged.
• You need to share the /sys/fs/cgroup from your host machine (it can be read-only) for it to be able to properly initialize docker daemon.

My solution:

1) To fulfill the first two issues above, your Dockerfile can be:

CopyFROM amazonlinux:2

RUN yum update -y && yum install -y initscripts;

CMD ["/usr/sbin/init"]

2) Build an image from it, e.g. docker build . -t ax1

3) Then, to address the latter two issues above, run a detached (running in background) container from it, priviledged, with a shared volume to your /sys/fs/cgroup. e.g.

docker run --name ac11 -d --privileged -v /sys/fs/cgroup:/sys/fs/cgroup:ro ax1

4) Finally you can bash into it using docker exec -it ac11 bash

5) Now, it's very close to a new EC2 instance. (Yet, missing sudo, actual ec2-user and other stuffs that we skipped in our Dockerfile to keep this solution simple.)

Anyway, now you can install docker as instructed by AWS Docs. That is, once you are in the container, do:

Copyamazon-linux-extras install -y docker;

and then restart the docker service once:

Copyservice docker restart;

Now, docker ps should be working!