Unable to switch filesystem to overlay in Docker in Ubuntu

Question

I'm using vagrant to run docker with ubuntu on my mac. Im the root user and am trying to switch from devicemapper to overlay but this comes up:

root@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:/# service docker stop
docker stop/waiting
root@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:/# rm -rf /var/lib/docker
root@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:/# docker daemon -s overlay
Command "daemon" is deprecated, and will be removed in Docker 1.16. Please run `dockerd` directly.
INFO[0000] libcontainerd: new containerd process, pid: 6788
WARN[0000] containerd: low RLIMIT_NOFILE changing to max  current=1024 max=4096
ERRO[0001] 'overlay' not found as a supported filesystem on this host. Please ensure kernel is new enough and has overlay support loaded.
Error starting daemon: error initializing graphdriver: driver not supported
root@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:

Step 2 wont work because the grep won't return any 'overlay' from lsmod:

root@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:/# uname -r
3.13.0-107-generic
root@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:/# lsmod | grep overlay
root@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:/#


root@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:/# dockerd --storage-driver=overlay
INFO[0000] libcontainerd: new containerd process, pid: 6816
WARN[0000] containerd: low RLIMIT_NOFILE changing to max  current=1024 max=4096
ERRO[0001] 'overlay' not found as a supported filesystem on this host. Please ensure kernel is new enough and has overlay support loaded.
Error starting daemon: error initializing graphdriver: driver not supported
root@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:/#

What should I be doing different?

Answer 1

From the official docs: https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/storagedriver/overlayfs-driver/#configure-docker-with-the-overlayoverlay2-storage-driver

To configure Docker to use the overlay storage driver your Docker host must be running version 3.18 of the Linux kernel (preferably newer) with the overlay kernel module loaded. For the overlay2 driver, the version of your kernel must be 4.0 or newer.

Your problem is your kernel version being 3.13. You should backup your virtual machine and upgrade you VM kernel to a newer version or simply upgrade your ubuntu VM to 16.04.