Run the Jenkins Container

Docker simplifies packaging applications with all their dependencies.

Through Docker, we can have a running Jenkins instance in a matter of seconds.

In your terminal, run:

(If running Docker for Windows, please refer to Important section below)

    docker run --name jenkins \
    -v $(which docker):/usr/local/bin/docker \
    -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
    --privileged \
    --user root \
    -p 50000:50000 \
    -p 8080:8080 \
    -d \
    jenkins/jenkins:lts

Table 1. Command Line Breakdown
Command Section	Description
docker run	Tells docker to going to run a container image
--name jenkins	Names the container being launched `jenkins`. This is done for ease of referencing it later.
-v $(which docker):/usr/local/bin/docker	Mounts the local docker executable to the Jenkins container, since docker is not installed in the container.
-v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock	Mounts the local docker daemon socket to the Jenkins container.
–privileged	Escalates the container permissions so it can launch containers on the host docker daemon
–user root	Runs the container as the root user so it can launch containers on the host docker daemon
-p 50000:50000	Port forwarding of the default JNLP agent port to our localhost
-p 8080:8080	Port forwading of the Jenkins Console port to our localhost
-d	Runs the container process in the background
jenkins/jenkins:lts	The container image from which to run this container

If port 8080 is already in use by another process then this command will fail. To run Jenkins on a different port, swap out the first 8080 to your desired port: <desired port number>:8080.

Windows OS: When using Docker for Windows, use the following command to run the Jenkins container: docker run --name jenkins -v /usr/local/bin/docker:/usr/bin/docker -v //var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock --privileged --user root -p 50000:50000 -p 8080:8080 -d jenkins/jenkins:lts

You can run docker logs -f jenkins to see the Jenkins logs. It will say "Jenkins is fully up and running" when Jenkins is ready.

You can validate the container launched as expected by going to http://localhost:8080.

You should see the Jenkins Startup Wizard:

In the next section, we’ll learn how to get past this Startup Wizard and configure the newly deployed Jenkins instance.

Prerequisites

Configuring Jenkins