Operation not permitted systemctl with docker + systemctl

As explained in centos docker image repository, Systemd is not active by default. In order to use systemd, you will need to include text similar to the example Dockerfile below:

FROM centos:7
MAINTAINER "you" <[email protected]>
ENV container docker
RUN (cd /lib/systemd/system/sysinit.target.wants/; for i in *; do [ $i == systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service ] || rm -f $i; done); \
rm -f /lib/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/*;\
rm -f /etc/systemd/system/*.wants/*;\
rm -f /lib/systemd/system/local-fs.target.wants/*; \
rm -f /lib/systemd/system/sockets.target.wants/*udev*; \
rm -f /lib/systemd/system/sockets.target.wants/*initctl*; \
rm -f /lib/systemd/system/basic.target.wants/*;\
rm -f /lib/systemd/system/anaconda.target.wants/*;
VOLUME [ "/sys/fs/cgroup" ]
CMD ["/usr/sbin/init"]

This Dockerfile deletes a number of unit files which might cause issues. From here, you are ready to build your base image.

$ docker build --rm -t local/c7-systemd .

In order to use the systemd enabled base container created above, you will need to change your Dockerfile to:

FROM local/c7-systemd
ENV container docker
VOLUME ["/sys/fs/cgroup"]
RUN yum -y update
RUN yum install -y httpd
RUN systemctl start httpd.service
ADD . /code
WORKDIR /code