Docker on ARM

For a project i'm working on i needed to run docker on a cubietruck, this boards use a dual core cortex A7 so i needed it to run on ARM architectures. In the docker web page there's a mention that i works on ARM and other architectures.

Befora i tried to create a package or install it system wide i tried to compile it on the cubietruck, it was pleasant to see that i compiled without any problems:

git clone <docker sources>
cd docker
hack/make.sh dynbinary

Once it compiled i tried to run it, this time i got dissapointed

$ docker -D -d -H unix:///var/run/docker.sock
The Docker runtime currently only supports amd64 (not arm). This will change in the future. Aborting.

Apparently the upstream guys don't think it is a good idea to run it on ARM architectures. Since i know that LXC is working with no problem in the the latest Linux kernels i put myself to the task of making it work.
A little grepping showed that there's just one if that aborts the execution on non x86_64 architectures (for some reason the go language identifies it as amd64) so i created a little patch [1] to make it work.

 func checkKernelAndArch() error {
 	// Check for unsupported architectures
-	if runtime.GOARCH != "amd64" {
-		return fmt.Errorf("The Docker runtime currently only supports amd64 (not %s). This will change in the futu
re. Aborting.", runtime.GOARCH)
+    if (runtime.GOARCH != "amd64") && (runtime.GOARCH != "arm") {
+		return fmt.Errorf("The Docker runtime currently only supports amd64 or arm (not %s). This will change in t
he future. Aborting.", runtime.GOARCH)
 	}
 	// Check for unsupported kernel versions
 	// FIXME: it would be cleaner to not test for specific versions, but rather

Compiled it again and this time docker run without problems! :)

Since i've been spending a lot of time building RPM packages i cloned the package from the fedora git repos and added the patch to it.

change ExclusiveArch to {%go_arches}

It's important to set:

export GOROOT=/usr/lib/golang
export GOPATH=/usr/share/gocode

'This are raw notes'