Last Updated:

How to update a Docker Container like Portainer?

Tech Fossa
Tech Fossa Docker

Update a Docker Container

In a earlier post we deployed a Portainer container. Check out that post here.
There is a Portainer update available as we can see in the bottom left of the Portainer webinterface:

Let's try to update to the latest version! 📀

Check out these sources for more information, requirements and instructions:
Source: https://www.portainer.io/
Documentation: https://docs.portainer.io/start/install-ce / https://docs.portainer.io/start/upgrade/docker

Table of Contents

Update steps and result target

Since Portainer is deployed as a Docker Container we cannot use it to manage "itself". We need to take some action ourself. 💪

  • Stop the Portainer container when running and remove Portainer container
  • Download and deploy the latest version of the Portainer image
  • Check if Portainer is working and running on the latest version

Stop the Portainer container when running

List all running containers:

sudo docker container ls

👇 Example output 👇The Portainer container is running.

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                           COMMAND                  CREATED       STATUS                 PORTS                                                                                            NAMES
a4953c7db586   louislam/uptime-kuma:1          "/usr/bin/dumb-init …"   12 days ago   Up 2 hours (healthy)   0.0.0.0:3001->3001/tcp, :::3001->3001/tcp                                                        uptime-kuma
730e9777e166   portainer/portainer-ce:latest   "/portainer"             3 weeks ago   Up 2 hours             0.0.0.0:8000->8000/tcp, :::8000->8000/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9443->9443/tcp, :::9443->9443/tcp, 9000/tcp   portainer

Let's stop the container called portainer.

sudo docker stop portainer

Example output 👇The only output is the name of the container: portainer. This is the expected output.

portainer
Check if the container is still running or not
sudo docker container ls

👇 Example output 👇The Portainer container is not running anymore:

techfossa@techfossa-demo-01:~$ sudo docker container ls
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                    COMMAND                  CREATED       STATUS                 PORTS                                       NAMES
a4953c7db586   louislam/uptime-kuma:1   "/usr/bin/dumb-init …"   12 days ago   Up 3 hours (healthy)   0.0.0.0:3001->3001/tcp, :::3001->3001/tcp   uptime-kuma
We will now remove the Portainer container
sudo docker rm portainer

👇 Example output 👇The only output is the name of the container: portainer. This is the expected output.

portainer

Pull and deploy

Download the latest Portainer image version:

sudo docker pull portainer/portainer-ce:latest

👇 Example output 👇 A new image is downloaded:

techfossa@techfossa-demo-01:~$ sudo docker pull portainer/portainer-ce:latest
latest: Pulling from portainer/portainer-ce
a036d31327aa: Pull complete
51b7d20b40ba: Pull complete
d40df14c1d7a: Pull complete
8215717c7c10: Pull complete
542669febe7c: Pull complete
6c27c7f45b54: Pull complete
09b63b7105b3: Pull complete
11cb7599cbba: Pull complete
5ce017686e14: Pull complete
9055ac8e891a: Pull complete
4f4fb700ef54: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:fcd79694da039537aa4c287f0e0a140f6d356fec3128774523e77fc66e0b6de3
Status: Downloaded newer image for portainer/portainer-ce:latest
docker.io/portainer/portainer-ce:latest
techfossa@techfossa-demo-01:~$

Deploy the latest version of the Portainer image by entering the original run command from our previous post:

sudo docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9443:9443 --name portainer --restart=unless-stopped -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v /data/dockerdata/portainer/data:/data portainer/portainer-ce:latest

👇 Example output 👇 This is the expected output.

techfossa@techfossa-demo-01:~$ sudo docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9443:9443 --name portainer --restart=unless-stopped -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v /data/dockerdata/portainer/data:/data portainer/portainer-ce:latest
5b44c37368616f1d95d8e73794dafe4c52a3f3a418f1c6a11dd37c4c8777ed80
techfossa@techfossa-demo-01:~$

Check Portainer

Check if Portainer is running on the latest version, we should be able to login with our credentials.No issue there, the new version of Portainer is now showing in the bottom left corner:

We have now completed the update from version 2.21.0 to 2.21.2. 🏁