Docker on Kali Linux

To install Docker on Kali you need to remember that there is already a package named “docker”, therefore Docker has to be installed under a different name. If you install docker you will not end up with the container version. The version we will be installing is named docker.io. All commands are the same however, so running docker on the command line will be the appropriate command:

kali@kali:~$ sudo apt update
kali@kali:~$
kali@kali:~$ sudo apt install -y docker.io
kali@kali:~$
kali@kali:~$ sudo systemctl enable docker --now
kali@kali:~$
kali@kali:~$ docker
kali@kali:~$

You can now get started with using docker, with sudo. To run docker without sudo, follow the Docker without root privileges runbook (add your user to the docker group, then log out and back in).

If you would like to use a Kali Docker image, we have a doc page for that here.

Installing docker-ce on Kali Linux

docker-ce can be installed from Docker repository. One thing to bear in mind, Kali Linux is based on Debian, so we need to use Debian’s current stable version (even though Kali Linux is a rolling distribution). At the time of writing (Dec. 2021), its “bullseye”:

kali@kali:~$ printf '%s\n' "deb https://download.docker.com/linux/debian bullseye stable" |
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker-ce.list

Import the gpg key:

kali@kali:~$ curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg |
  sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/docker-ce-archive-keyring.gpg

Install the latest version of docker-ce:

kali@kali:~$ sudo apt update
kali@kali:~$ sudo apt install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io