Quickstart

Follow the steps in this guide to install Coder locally or on a cloud-hosting provider, set up a workspace, and connect to it from VS Code.

By the end of this guide, you'll have a remote development environment that you can connect to from any device anywhere, so you can work on the same files in a persistent environment from your main device, a tablet, or your phone.

Install and start Coder

Configure Coder with a new Workspace

1. Coder will attempt to open the setup page in your browser. If it doesn't open automatically, go to http://localhost:3000.

   • If you get a browser warning similar to Secure Site Not Available, you can ignore the warning and continue to the setup page.

   If your Coder server is on a network or cloud device, or you are having trouble viewing the page, locate the web UI URL in Coder logs in your terminal. It looks like https://<CUSTOM-STRING>.<TUNNEL>.try.coder.app. It's one of the first lines of output, so you might have to scroll up to find it.

2. On the Welcome to Coder page, to use your GitHub account to log in, select Continue with GitHub. You can also enter an email and password to create a new admin account on the Coder deployment:

   Welcome to Coder - Create admin user

3. On the Workspaces page, select Go to templates to create a new template.

4. For this guide, use a Docker container. Locate Docker Containers and select Use template.

5. Give the template a Name that you'll recognize both in the Coder UI and in command-line calls.

   The rest of the template details are optional, but will be helpful when you have more templates.

   Create template

6. Select Save.

7. After the template is ready, select Create Workspace.

8. Give the workspace a name and select Create Workspace.

9. Coder starts your new workspace:

   Workspace is running

10. Select VS Code Desktop to install the Coder extension and connect to your Coder workspace.

Work on some code

After VS Code loads the remote environment, you can select Open Folder to explore directories in the Docker container or work on something new.

To clone an existing repository:

1. Select Clone Repository and enter the repository URL.

   For example, to clone the Coder repo, enter https://github.com/coder/coder.git.

   Learn more about how to find the repository URL in the GitHub documentation.

2. Choose the folder to which VS Code should clone the repo. It will be in its own directory within this folder.

   Note that you cannot create a new parent directory in this step.

3. After VS Code completes the clone, select Open to open the directory.

4. You are now using VS Code in your Coder environment!

What's next?

Now that you have your own workspace, use the same template to set one up for a teammate.

Go to Templates and select Create Workspace and continue from Step 7 in Configure Coder with a new workspace.

After that, you can try to:

• Customize templates
• Enable Prometheus metrics
• Deploy to Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Troubleshooting

Cannot connect to the Docker daemon

Error: Error pinging Docker server: Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?

1. Install Docker for your system:

   curl -sSL https://get.docker.com | sh

2. Set up the Docker daemon in rootless mode for your user to run Docker as a non-privileged user:

   dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh install

   Depending on your system's dependencies, you might need to run other commands before you retry this step. Read the output of this command for further instructions.

3. Assign your user to the Docker group:

   sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

4. Confirm that the user has been added:

   $ groups docker sudo users

   • Ubuntu users might not see the group membership update. In that case, run the following command or reboot the machine:

     newgrp docker

Can't start Coder server: Address already in use

1. Stop the process:

   sudo systemctl stop coder

2. Start Coder:

   coder server