How does Docker run a Linux kernel under macOS host?

I installed Docker on my macOS Sierra as follows. Note I don’t have VirtualBox installed.

brew cask uninstall virtualbox
brew cask install docker

My macOS details.

$ uname -a
Darwin m-C02QG7TRG8WN.local 16.5.0 Darwin Kernel Version 16.5.0: Fri Mar  3 16:52:33 PST 2017; root:xnu-3789.51.2~3/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

$ docker version
Client:
 Version:      17.03.1-ce
 API version:  1.27
 Go version:   go1.7.5
 Git commit:   c6d412e
 Built:        Tue Mar 28 00:40:02 2017
 OS/Arch:      darwin/amd64

Server:
 Version:      17.03.1-ce
 API version:  1.27 (minimum version 1.12)
 Go version:   go1.7.5
 Git commit:   c6d412e
 Built:        Fri Mar 24 00:00:50 2017
 OS/Arch:      linux/amd64
 Experimental: true

Once I run Docker from launchpad, I am able to run Docker containers.

$ docker run -it ubuntu
root@2351d4222a4e:/# uname -a
Linux 2351d4222a4e 4.9.13-moby #1 SMP Sat Mar 25 02:48:44 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

My question is how does Docker manage to run a Linux kernel within macOS? I thought Docker would at least require boot2docker or some other such Linux kernel running so that it can create the Ubuntu’s filesystem with the help of it. But the above output seems to indicate that it is not so. Where does the Linux kernel come from then?

Answer

While the other answers are correct about the hypervisor, they don’t answer your specific question.

The answer is “Docker [Desktop] for Mac” does run a Linux host VM with a replacement for boot2docker – LinuxKit developed and maintained by Docker for the purpose of making lightweight distributions.

https://blog.docker.com/2017/04/introducing-linuxkit-container-os-toolkit/

The uname you saw didn’t have the keyword in it, but it seems to be included now, e.g. from Docker for Mac 18.03.1 I see:

Linux a8e079429a51 4.9.87-linuxkit-aufs #1 SMP Wed Mar 14 15:12:16 UTC 2018 x86_64 Linux

You can see links to the included versions on the release pages. https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/release-notes/

So it’s not so different from the old days Docker Machine + VirtualBox + boot2docker,

for the new days, it’s just the provisioning is done internally by “Docker [Desktop] for Mac” and VirtualBox is replaced by Apple's Hyperkit, and the "default VM" is a bit more tucked away.