Jenkins in Docker using Docker

23 September 2017

Say you want to run your Jenkins itself in docker. But the Jenkins build-jobs also uses docker!?

Either you have to install docker in docker, or you let the Jenkins docker-client access the host’s docker-daemon.

  1. Map the unix socket into the Jenkins container:

    -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock

  2. But the jenkins user will not have permissions to access the socket by default. So, first check the GID of the group that owns the socket:

    getent group dockerroot

  3. Now create a group (name is irrelevant; lets name it "docker") in the Jenkins container with the same GID and assign the jenkins user to it:

    sudo groupadd -g 982 docker
sudo usermod -aG docker jenkins