Finally systemd is running inside RedHat / CentOS Containers

RHEL Sample

docker run \
   --rm \
   --name rhel8 \
   --privileged \
   -v /sys/fs/cgroup:/sys/fs/cgroup:ro \
   --tmpfs /run \
   -p 8080:80 \
   -d \
   registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi-init

Check it’s up docker ps | grep rhel8

Install Web Server

docker exec -it rhel8 curl -o /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo https://gist.githubusercontent.com/abdennour/2e1360aabd0c9af04c6b02c2d1208ca1/raw/eaee9dffd6cfc862339bbbc5a2642c82a1404010/nginx.repo
# If you don't have subscription-manager registration, run above command
docker exec -it rhel8 yum update -y
docker exec -it rhel8 yum install nginx -y
docker exec -it rhel8 systemctl start nginx

Validate

Go to your browser http://localhost:8080

Congrats 🎉🎊 !!!

docker exec -it rhel8 systemctl enable nginx is useful to auto-start nginx after restarting the container (docker restart rhel8 )

Cleanup

docker rm -f rhel8

Centos Sample

docker run \
   --rm \
   --name centos7 \
   --privileged \ 
   -v /sys/fs/cgroup:/sys/fs/cgroup:ro \
   -p 8080:80 \
   -d \
   centos/systemd

Check it’s up docker ps | grep centos7

Install Web Server

docker exec -it centos7 yum update -y
docker exec -it centos7 yum install nginx -y
docker exec -it centos7 systemctl start nginx

Validate

Go to your browser http://localhost:8080 .

Congrats 🎉🎊 !!!

docker exec -it centos7 systemctl enable nginx is useful to auto-start nginx after restarting the container (docker restart centos7 )

Cleanup

docker rm -f centos7

Force it to Work !😎

You may feel like this 😩 if it does not work.

Thus, you can add these options:

--tmpfs /run \
--tmpfs /run/lock \
--tmpfs /tmp \
--cap-add SYS_ADMIN \

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 I am now able to spin up a full staging environment of containers for my Ansible playbooks and point my inventory to them.