Launch docker automatically when starting ec2 server - amazon-web-services

Question

Everytime I restart my ec2 server I have to do:
sudo systemctl start docker and then docker-compose up -d to launch all my containers.
Would there be a way to automatically run these two commands at the start of the instance?
I have read this answer and I think ideally I would like to know how to do that:
Create a systemd service and enable it. All the enabled systems
services will be started on powering.
Do you know how to create such systemd service?
[EDIT 1]: Following Chris William's comment, here is what I have done:
Thanks Chris, so I created a docker_boot.service with the following content:
[Unit]
Description=docker boot
After=docker.service
[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
User=ec2-user
ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
I created it in /etc/systemd/system folder
I then did:
sudo systemctl enable docker
sudo systemctl enable docker_boot
When I turn on the server, the only Docker images that are running are certbot/certbot and telethonkids/shinyproxy
Please find below the content of my docker-compose.yml file.
Do you see what is missing so that all images are up and running?
version: "3.5"
services:
rstudio:
environment:
- USER=username
- PASSWORD=password
image: "rocker/tidyverse:latest"
build:
context: ./Docker_RStudio
dockerfile: Dockerfile
volumes:
- /home/ec2-user/R_and_Jupyter_scripts:/home/maxence/R_and_Jupyter_scripts
working_dir: /home/ec2-user/R_and_Jupyter_scripts
container_name: rstudio
ports:
- 8787:8787
jupyter:
image: 'jupyter/datascience-notebook:latest'
ports:
- 8888:8888
volumes:
- /home/ec2-user/R_and_Jupyter_scripts:/home/joyvan/R_and_Jupyter_scripts
working_dir: /home/joyvan/R_and_Jupyter_scripts
container_name: jupyter
shiny:
image: "rocker/shiny:latest"
build:
context: ./Docker_Shiny
dockerfile: Dockerfile
container_name: shiny
ports:
- 3838:3838
nginx:
image: nginx:alpine
container_name: nginx
restart: on-failure
networks:
- net
volumes:
- ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
- ./data/certbot/conf:/etc/letsencrypt
- ./data/certbot/www:/var/www/certbot
ports:
- 80:80
- 443:443
command: "/bin/sh -c 'while :; do sleep 6h & wait $${!}; nginx -s reload; done & nginx -g \"daemon off;\"'"
depends_on:
- shinyproxy
certbot:
image: certbot/certbot
container_name: certbot
restart: on-failure
volumes:
- ./data/certbot/conf:/etc/letsencrypt
- ./data/certbot/www:/var/www/certbot
entrypoint: "/bin/sh -c 'trap exit TERM; while :; do certbot renew; sleep 12h & wait $${!}; done;'"
shinyproxy:
image: telethonkids/shinyproxy
container_name: shinyproxy
restart: on-failure
networks:
- net
volumes:
- ./application.yml:/opt/shinyproxy/application.yml
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
expose:
- 8080
cron:
build:
context: ./cron
dockerfile: Dockerfile
container_name: cron
volumes:
- ./Docker_Shiny/app:/home
networks:
- net
networks:
net:
name: net

Answer 1

Using Amazon Linux 2 I tried to replicate the issue. Obviously, I don't have all the dependencies to run your exact docker-compose.yml, thus I used the docker-compose.yml from here for my verification. The file setups wordpress with mysql .
Steps I took were following (executed as ec2-user in home folder):
1. Install docker
sudo yum update -y
sudo yum install -y docker
sudo systemctl enable docker
sudo systemctl start docker
2. Install docker-compose
sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m) -o /usr/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/docker-compose
3. Create docker-compose.yml
mkdir myapp
Create file ./myapp/docker-compose.yml:
version: '3.3'
services:
db:
image: mysql:5.7
volumes:
- db_data:/var/lib/mysql
restart: always
environment:
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: somewordpress
MYSQL_DATABASE: wordpress
MYSQL_USER: wordpress
MYSQL_PASSWORD: wordpress
wordpress:
depends_on:
- db
image: wordpress:latest
ports:
- "8000:80"
restart: always
environment:
WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: db:3306
WORDPRESS_DB_USER: wordpress
WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: wordpress
WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: wordpress
volumes:
db_data: {}
4. Create docker_boot.service
The file is different then yours, as there were few potential issues in your file:
not using absolute paths
ec2-user may have no permissions to run docker
Create file ./myapp/docker_boot.service:
[Unit]
Description=docker boot
After=docker.service
[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
WorkingDirectory=/home/ec2-user/myapp
ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker-compose -f /home/ec2-user/myapp/docker-compose.yml up -d --remove-orphans
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
5. Copy docker_boot.service to systemd
sudo cp -v ./myapp/docker_boot.service /etc/systemd/system
6. Enable and start docker_boot.service
sudo systemctl enable docker_boot.service
sudo systemctl start docker_boot.service
Note: First start may take some time, as it will pull all docker images required. Alternatively start docker-compose manually first to avoid this.
7. Check status of the docker_boot.service
sudo systemctl status docker_boot.service
8. Check if the wordpress is up
curl -L localhost:8000
9. Reboot
Check if the docker_boot.service is running after instance reboot by logging in into the instance and using sudo systemctl status docker_boot.service and/or curl -L localhost:8000.

Answer 2

To have a service launch at launch you would run the following command sudo systemctl enable docker.
For having it then launch your docker compose up -d command you'd need to create a new service for your specific action, and then enable it with the contents similar to the below.
[Unit]
After=docker.service
Description=Docker compose
[Service]
ExecStart=docker-compose up -d
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
More information for this is available in this post.