Portainer is a powerful web-based UI for managing Docker environments. It simplifies container management, image deployment, volume administration, and network configuration. This guide installs Portainer Community Edition on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

Tested and valid on:

  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Prerequisites

  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS server
  • Docker Engine installed
  • A user in the docker group

Step 1 – Create the Portainer Volume

Portainer stores its data in a Docker volume:

docker volume create portainer_data

Step 2 – Run the Portainer Container

Start Portainer CE:

docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9443:9443 --name portainer --restart always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v portainer_data:/data portainer/portainer-ce:latest

Step 3 – Access the Portainer Web UI

Open a browser and navigate to:

https://your_server_ip:9443

Create an admin user and password on the first visit.

Step 4 – Connect to the Local Docker Environment

Select Docker as the environment type and click Connect. The local Docker socket is already configured.

Step 5 – Deploy a Container via the UI

In the Portainer dashboard: go to Containers → Add container, enter the image name (e.g., nginx:latest), set port mappings, and click Deploy the container.

Step 6 – Update Portainer

To update to a newer version:

docker stop portainer
docker rm portainer
docker pull portainer/portainer-ce:latest
docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9443:9443 --name portainer --restart always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v portainer_data:/data portainer/portainer-ce:latest

Conclusion

Portainer CE is now running on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The web interface provides a graphical alternative to Docker CLI commands, making container management accessible to the whole team.