Is it possible to run containers on android devices?

Question

I’m a mobile developer and recently adept at using containers with docker. I’m developing a container architecture for my graduate project. One of the modules of this architecture would need to be run on an android device. But I could not find information on how to run a container on an android device. It could be something simple like an alpine image with python.

Can anyone tell me if there is a possibility to run a container on an android device with docker, or even kubernetes?

Answer 1

It is possible to use it for running docker on an android device using an application like termux or userland to install a qemu package.

The best way is to use alpine linux terminal, an android app available on github.

This alpine term app has a QEMU to run like alpine ISO. All things are automated and this works with x86_64 kernel on any android.

Some android phones have a KVM kernel so this device can run faster alpine term

Also my friends made a video on a YouTube channel to run docker on any android phone without root.

Answer 2

In 2021, the answer is definitely yes.

Here is a tutorial on that topic, which shows you how to run docker directly on Android, without VMs nor chroot. Note that you do need to root your phone and build a custom kernel though.

If you only want a quick look of docker running on android without getting your hands dirty, check out this comment on GitHub.