How to Install & Set Up containerd

Install containerd — the industry-standard container runtime beneath Docker and Kubernetes — and generate its default configuration.

Updated 20263-step setupDownload containerd →

Prerequisites

✓A 64-bit Linux host with sudo access

Install containerd

The simplest route on Ubuntu is the containerd.io package from Docker's repository (see the Docker Engine guide for adding the repo).

Ubuntu / Debian (Docker's APT repo)

sudo apt-get install -y containerd.io

RHEL / CentOS Stream / Fedora (Docker's RPM repo)

sudo dnf -y install dnf-plugins-core
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo
sudo dnf install -y containerd.io

Generate the default config

terminal

sudo mkdir -p /etc/containerd
containerd config default | sudo tee /etc/containerd/config.toml
sudo systemctl restart containerd
sudo systemctl enable containerd

For Kubernetes, set SystemdCgroup = true under the runc options in /etc/containerd/config.toml.

Verify the installation

terminal

sudo ctr version

Documentation & Knowledge Base

Official Documentationcontainerd Documentation →Knowledge Base & Communitycontainerd GitHub Discussions →

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