Set up postgres instance

On the ubuntu server download latest postgres docker image

docker pull postgres

Now we have the latest version of the official postgres image we can attach it to the locally running docker service.

$ docker run --name some-postgres -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mysecretpassword -d postgres

This will also (-e) EXPOSE 5432, the default postgres port allowing concurrently running containers to link easily. The default (-d) postgres user and database are created with initdb as the entry point.

To connect another image/app that needs to use the original postgres container we have to run it with the below command.

$ docker run --name some-app --link some-postgres:postgres -d application-that-uses-postgres