In this blog post, we will show you how to install Docker Images on Ubuntu 26.04 OS. Docker is an open-source platform for running applications in isolated environments called containers. The key concepts of Docker are containerization, Docker YAML file, Docker Engine, and Images. Containers are lightweight, isolated executable application environments. A Docker YAML file is a simple text file with all commands for building a Docker Image. Docker Engine is the core server-client application that manages containers, images, and other Docker objects. Since this tutorial covers installing (creating) Docker Images, a brief explanation will be provided in the next sections.
What is a Docker Image?
A Docker Image is a read-only template with instructions for creating a Docker container. A Docker Image is a snapshot of the container’s filesystem and configuration. It is an immutable, standardized package that ensures an application can run across different environments, from local computers to public servers. A Docker Image contains all the libraries, dependencies, and files that the container needs to run. A Docker image is shareable and portable, allowing us to deploy the same image across multiple locations simultaneously—much like a software binary. We can store images in registries to track complex software architecture, projects, business segments, and user group access.
What is Docker Hub?
Docker Hub is the largest cloud-based service for storing, managing, and sharing Docker Images. Docker Hub is the central repository for both open-source images and private team-specific images. It provides official images for Ubuntu, Nginx, MySQL, WordPress, Laravel, and many other tools for automation and deployment, helping developers and administrators quickly build, run, and ship their applications. On Docker Hub, we can push the images that we created, including all dependencies, and other developers can pull the exact image we pushed. In other words, Docker Hub is like GitHub’s version control system, but for Docker images only. In our blog post, we will show you how to install a Docker Image from the official Docker Hub registry.
Installing Docker Images is a straightforward process that takes a couple of seconds, but there are plenty of steps we need to take before creating our first Docker Image. Let’s dig deeper into this!
Prerequisites
- A server with Ubuntu 26.04 as the OS
- User privileges: root or non-root user with sudo privileges
Step 1. Update the System
Before we start with the installation of the Docker service, we will update the system packages to their latest versions available:
apt update -y && apt upgrade -y
Step 2. Install Docker Engine
By default, Docker is included in the official repository. To install Docker, simply execute the following command:
apt install docker.io -y
Once installed, start and enable the Docker service with the command below:
systemctl start docker && systemctl enable docker
To check the status of the service, you can use the following command:
[email protected]:~# systemctl status docker ● docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; enabled; preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Sat 2026-01-17 01:00:40 UTC; 4min 19s ago Invocation: edf2a008cc9545248b8e4318d94397e0 TriggeredBy: ● docker.socket Docs: https://docs.docker.com Main PID: 53651 (dockerd) Tasks: 9 Memory: 111.6M (peak: 113.3M) CPU: 407ms CGroup: /system.slice/docker.service └─53651 /usr/bin/dockerd -H fd:// --containerd=/run/containerd/containerd.sock
Step 3. Install Docker Image
Once Docker is installed, we can easily search and install Docker Images. Let’s find a Docker Image for WordPress installation:
docker search wordpress
You should receive an output similar to this:
root@ubuntu26:~# docker search wordpress NAME DESCRIPTION STARS OFFICIAL wordpress The WordPress rich content management system… 5857 [OK] bitnami/wordpress Bitnami Secure Image for wordpress 281 bitnamicharts/wordpress Bitnami Helm chart for WordPress 2 elestio/wordpress WordPress, verified and packaged by Elestio 6 secoresearch/wordpress Apache+PHP+Varnish+Wordpress 0 shinsenter/wordpress (PHP / WordPress) Production-ready Docker… 5 vulhub/wordpress 4 chainguard/wordpress Build, ship and run secure software with Cha… 0 corpusops/wordpress https://github.com/corpusops/docker-images/ 0 rootpublic/wordpress 0 centurylink/wordpress WordPress image with MySQL removed. 14 erikzenker/wordpress wordpress docker image 0 arm32v7/wordpress The WordPress rich content management system… 16 arm64v8/wordpress The WordPress rich content management system… 21 tutum/wordpress Out-of-the-box WordPress docker image 42 amd64/wordpress The WordPress rich content management system… 2 demyx/wordpress Non-root Docker image running Alpine Linux, … 2 i386/wordpress The WordPress rich content management system… 1 ppc64le/wordpress The WordPress rich content management system… 1 itherz/wordpress WordPress 0 wodby/wordpress Vanilla WordPress container image 2 s390x/wordpress The WordPress rich content management system… 5 spatialy/wordpress WordPress + PHP Extensions 0 arm32v5/wordpress The WordPress rich content management system… 0 mips64le/wordpress The WordPress rich content management system… 1
Let’s choose the first official WordPress that is bolded above. First, we can pull it on our server:
docker pull wordpress
Once it is downloaded, we can list to check the images:
docker images
You should get the following output:
[email protected]:~# docker images IMAGE ID DISK USAGE CONTENT SIZE EXTRA wordpress:latest 03e91f888c2b 1.06GB 272MB
To install WordPress from the image file, we need to execute the following command:
docker run wordpress:latest &
This will run WordPress in the background, and to check the running container, we can use the command below:
docker ps -a
You should receive output similar to this:
[email protected]:~# docker ps -a CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 857b69ad767b wordpress:latest "docker-entrypoint.s…" 2 minutes ago Up 2 minutes 80/tcp thirsty_galois
This is OK, and Docker is running, but WordPress will not work, since there is no database. To make WordPress work, we need to run the command with another image for the database.
Let’s first pull the MySQL database image:
docker pull mysql:5.7
Then, we need to create a network for WordPress:
docker network create wp-network
Next is to run the MySQL image:
docker run -d \ --name wp-mysql \ --network wp-network \ -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=your_strong_password \ -e MYSQL_DATABASE=wordpress \ -e MYSQL_USER=wp_user \ -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=wp_password \ mysql:5.7
The docker ps -a command should give us this output:
[email protected]:# docker ps -a CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 0d0f572def37 mysql:5.7 "docker-entrypoint.s…" 31 seconds ago Up 29 seconds 3306/tcp, 33060/tcp wp-mysql
Stop and remove the previous WordPress container first:
docker stop 857b69ad767b
docker rm 857b69ad767b
Now we can run the WordPress image again, and connect with the MySQL database container:
docker run -d \ --name wp-app \ --network wp-network \ -p 80:80 \ -e WORDPRESS_DB_HOST=wp-mysql:3306 \ -e WORDPRESS_DB_USER=wp_user \ -e WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD=wp_password \ -e WORDPRESS_DB_NAME=wordpress \ wordpress:latest
Now the docker ps -a command will give the following output with two containers:
[email protected]# docker ps -a CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 5d0911866abd wordpress:latest "docker-entrypoint.s…" About a minute ago Up About a minute 0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, [::]:80->80/tcp wp-app 0d0f572def37 mysql:5.7 "docker-entrypoint.s…" 3 minutes ago Up 3 minutes 3306/tcp, 33060/tcp wp-mysql
Wrap Up
That’s it. You successfully installed multiple Docker Images on Ubuntu 26.04.
If you have difficulties with this installation, our Linux admins will help you with any aspect. You need to sign up for one of our monthly server management or per-incident server support plans. Do not hesitate to contact us anytime. We are available 24/7.
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