'docker exec' can only used on running container, but what is the meaning of running container? Is that means the container should be computing something? or is the issue about the [command] which I define for the container? Why my TensorFlow container always be stopped status?
After I used 'docker run' to build a tensorflow container, the container stopped automatically. I need to restart it and then execute command on it. Why the container cannot be always in running since I build it?
docker run -it --runtime=nvidia tensorflow/tensorflow:latest-gpu-py3
It will then pops up a bash which I can use to control the container. But after I exit, the container stopped itself. Which means, I can only use docker ps -a to see my container but docker pscan not. I have to restart the container if I want to use my container again.
UPDATE1: If I want create a container like VM, I cannot use docker run with a temporal [command] like python ... The container will lose control permanently after the command finished. docker restart cannot start the container again. Hence, docker exec cannot apply on it. Instead, using bash or nothing as the [command] can create a container which can be restart, therefore, can be applied withdocker exec.
UPDATE2: docker run -d -it can create a running container (but the bash shell won't pops up, neither even with bash). Directly using docker exec -it container_name bash can take the control of the running container again, without docker restart. In this time, exiting bash shell will not stop the container.
A container is running when there is an active process running inside it.
When you are running this tensorflow container, it will exit due to there being no running process
If you were to run
docker run -it --runtime=nvidia tensorflow/tensorflow:latest-gpu-py3 bash
or
docker run -it --runtime=nvidia tensorflow/tensorflow:latest-gpu-py3 python <python script name>
then the container would run the bash/python script as a process and therefore remain up whilst that process is running
View running processes with:
docker ps
See all containers (including stopped/exited tasks) with:
docker ps -a
The difference between docker ps -a and docker ps is exactly what you are looking for:
From the documentation:
--all , -a Show all containers (default shows just running)
So
docker ps gives you only running container
docker ps -a also shows you the stopped ones
So probably, if you expect you container to be long running, (like it would for a web server), then indeed your container command could have an issue and is not keeping your container alive.
Also mind that, if you run your container with the options -ti, like you did, you get an interactive tty attached to it.
--tty , -t Allocate a pseudo-TTY
--interactive , -i Keep STDIN open even if not attached
That basically means that, as soon as you exit that interactive context, your container will shut down.
Running it in a detached mode, with the options -d, is maybe what you are looking for
docker run -d --runtime=nvidia tensorflow/tensorflow:latest-gpu-py3
Related documentation:
--detach , -d Run container in background and print container ID
https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/run/
I run it in detached mode with,
docker run -d busybox:1.24
But it does not show up in docker ps
what is the reason? Should not it be working?
Should i have to pass "running command" like sleep 1000?
EDIT: Seems like the container stops when there is nothing to run.
When you run docker ps, you will only see a list of containers that are running.
To see all containers, including ones that are stopped, created, exited, restarting etc, you should use docker ps -a.
The busybox container isn’t running anything. So it will just exit as soon as it starts.
If you do docker run -d busybox:1.24 sleep 10, then run docker ps, you will see the running container - until the sleep process exits (after 10 seconds). At which point, you’ll need to use docker ps -a again.
Depends on what the CMD directives says in your Dockerfile. If you dont run a script or program that is running continuous the the container will simple end right away.
To see the status of the container: -a shows even exited containers
docker ps -a
To see what happend when it ran
docker logs <container-id>
To run a cmd prompt
docker run -it <container-id> /bin/bash
To run in detached mode you need a script or command that will wait eg:
sleep infinite
This is a very basic question. One can stop and remove a docker container like this.
docker stop <container_id>
docker rm <container_id>
Is it the same as this?
docker rm -f <container_id>
If they are not the same, what are the negative effects of using the latter?
I already saw single command to stop and remove docker container. But it doesn't answer my question.
They are similar you can check the man pages:
Usage: docker rm [OPTIONS] CONTAINER [CONTAINER...]
Remove one or more containers
-f, --force Force the removal of a running container (uses SIGKILL)
and
Usage: docker stop [OPTIONS] CONTAINER [CONTAINER...]
Stop a running container.
Sending SIGTERM and then SIGKILL after a grace period
--help Print usage
-t, --time=10 Seconds to wait for stop before killing it
I would say
docker stop <container_id>
docker rm <container_id>
would be a little more "graceful" since it sends first a SIGTERM prior to SIGKILL this would give docker a chance to clean things up.
According to tutorial I read so far, use "docker run -d" will start a container from image, and the container will run in background. This is how it looks like, we can see we already have container id.
root#docker:/home/root# docker run -d centos
605e3928cdddb844526bab691af51d0c9262e0a1fc3d41de3f59be1a58e1bd1d
But if I ran "docker ps", nothing was returned.
So I tried "docker ps -a", I can see container already exited:
root#docker:/home/root# docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
605e3928cddd centos:latest "/bin/bash" 31 minutes ago Exited (0) 31 minutes ago kickass_swartz
Anything I did wrong? How can I troubleshoot this issue?
The centos dockerfile has a default command bash.
That means, when run in background (-d), the shell exits immediately.
Update 2017
More recent versions of docker authorize to run a container both in detached mode and in foreground mode (-t, -i or -it)
In that case, you don't need any additional command and this is enough:
docker run -t -d centos
The bash will wait in the background.
That was initially reported in kalyani-chaudhari's answer and detailed in jersey bean's answer.
vonc#voncvb:~$ d ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
4a50fd9e9189 centos "/bin/bash" 8 seconds ago Up 2 seconds wonderful_wright
Note that for alpine, Marinos An reports in the comments:
docker run -t -d alpine/git does not keep the process up.
Had to do: docker run --entrypoint "/bin/sh" -it alpine/git
Original answer (2015)
As mentioned in this article:
Instead of running with docker run -i -t image your-command, using -d is recommended because you can run your container with just one command and you don’t need to detach terminal of container by hitting Ctrl + P + Q.
However, there is a problem with -d option. Your container immediately stops unless the commands keep running in foreground.
Docker requires your command to keep running in the foreground. Otherwise, it thinks that your applications stops and shutdown the container.
The problem is that some application does not run in the foreground. How can we make it easier?
In this situation, you can add tail -f /dev/null to your command.
By doing this, even if your main command runs in the background, your container doesn’t stop because tail is keep running in the foreground.
So this would work:
docker run -d centos tail -f /dev/null
Or in Dockerfile:
ENTRYPOINT ["tail"]
CMD ["-f","/dev/null"]
A docker ps would show the centos container still running.
From there, you can attach to it or detach from it (or docker exec some commands).
According to this answer, adding the -t flag will prevent the container from exiting when running in the background. You can then use docker exec -i -t <image> /bin/bash to get into a shell prompt.
docker run -t -d <image> <command>
It seems that the -t option isn't documented very well, though the help says that it "allocates a pseudo-TTY."
Background
A Docker container runs a process (the "command" or "entrypoint") that keeps it alive. The container will continue to run as long as the command continues to run.
In your case, the command (/bin/bash, by default, on centos:latest) is exiting immediately (as bash does when it's not connected to a terminal and has nothing to run).
Normally, when you run a container in daemon mode (with -d), the container is running some sort of daemon process (like httpd). In this case, as long as the httpd daemon is running, the container will remain alive.
What you appear to be trying to do is to keep the container alive without a daemon process running inside the container. This is somewhat strange (because the container isn't doing anything useful until you interact with it, perhaps with docker exec), but there are certain cases where it might make sense to do something like this.
(Did you mean to get to a bash prompt inside the container? That's easy! docker run -it centos:latest)
Solution
A simple way to keep a container alive in daemon mode indefinitely is to run sleep infinity as the container's command. This does not rely doing strange things like allocating a TTY in daemon mode. Although it does rely on doing strange things like using sleep as your primary command.
$ docker run -d centos:latest sleep infinity
$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
d651c7a9e0ad centos:latest "sleep infinity" 2 seconds ago Up 2 seconds nervous_visvesvaraya
Alternative Solution
As indicated by cjsimon, the -t option allocates a "pseudo-tty". This tricks bash into continuing to run indefinitely because it thinks it is connected to an interactive TTY (even though you have no way to interact with that particular TTY if you don't pass -i). Anyway, this should do the trick too:
$ docker run -t -d centos:latest
Not 100% sure whether -t will produce other weird interactions; maybe leave a comment below if it does.
Hi this issue is because docker containers exit if there is no running application in the container.
-d
option is just to run a container in deamon mode.
So the trick to make your container continuously running is point to a shell file in docker which will keep your application running.You can try with a start.sh file
Eg: docker run -d centos sh /yourlocation/start.sh
This start.sh should point to a never ending application.
In case if you dont want any application to be running,you can install monit which will keep your docker container running.
Please let us know if these two cases worked for you to keep your container running.
All the best
You can accomplish what you want with either:
docker run -t -d <image-name>
or
docker run -i -d <image-name>
or
docker run -it -d <image-name>
The command parameter as suggested by other answers (i.e. tail -f /dev/null) is completely optional, and is NOT required to get your container to stay running in the background.
Also note the Docker documentation suggests that combining -i and -t options will cause it to behave like a shell.
See:
https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/run/#foreground
I have this code snippet run from the ENTRYPOINT in my docker file:
while true
do
echo "Press [CTRL+C] to stop.."
sleep 1
done
Run the built docker image as:
docker run -td <image name>
Log in to the container shell:
docker exec -it <container id> /bin/bash
execute command as follows :
docker run -t -d <image-name>
if you want to specify port then command as below:
docker run -t -d -p <port-no> <image-name>
verify the running container using following command:
docker ps
Docker container exits if task inside is done, so if you want to keep it alive even if it does not have any job or already finished them, you can do docker run -di image. After you do docker container ls you will see it running.
Docker requires your command to keep running in the foreground. Otherwise, it thinks that your applications stops and shutdown the container.
So if your docker entry script is a background process like following:
/usr/local/bin/confd -interval=30 -backend etcd -node $CONFIG_CENTER &
The '&' makes the container stop and exit if there are no other foreground process triggered later.
So the solution is just remove the '&' or have another foreground CMD running after it, such as
tail -f server.log
If you are using CMD at the end of your Dockerfile, what you can do is adding the code at the end. This will only work if your docker is built on ubuntu, or any OS that can use bash.
&& /bin/bash
Briefly the end of your Dockerfile will look like something like this.
...
CMD ls && ... && /bin/bash
So if you have anything running automatically after you run your docker image, and when the task is complete the bash terminal will be active inside your docker. Thereby, you can enter you shell commands.
Maybe it is just me but on CentOS 7.3.1611 and Docker 1.12.6 but I ended up having to use a combination of the answers posted by #VonC & #Christopher Simon to get this working reliably. Nothing I did before this would stop the container from exiting after it ran CMD successfully. I am starting oracle-xe-11Gr2 and sshd.
Dockerfile
...
RUN ssh-keygen -t rsa -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key -N '' && systemctl enable sshd
...
CMD /etc/init.d/oracle-xe start && /sbin/sshd && tail -f /dev/null
Then adding -d -t and -i to run
docker run --shm-size=2g --name oracle-db -d -t -i -p 5022:22 -p 5080:8080 -p 1521:1521 centos-oracle:7.3.1611
Finally after hours of bashing my head against the wall
ssh -v root#127.0.0.1 -p 5022
...
root#127.0.0.1's password:
debug1: Authentication succeeded (password).
For whatever reason the above will exit after executing CMD if the tail -f is removed, or any of the -t -d -i options are omitted.
I had the same issue, just opening another terminal with a bash on it worked for me :
create container:
docker run -d mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2019-CTP3.0-ubuntu
containerid=52bbc9b30557
start container:
docker start 52bbc9b30557
start bash to keep container running:
docker exec -it 52bbc9b30557 bash
start process you need:
docker exec -it 52bbc9b30557 /path_to_cool_your_app
Running docker with interactive mode might solve the issue.
Here is the example for running image with and without interactive mode
chaitra#RSK-IND-BLR-L06:~/dockers$ sudo docker run -d -t -i test_again1.0
b6b9a942a79b1243bada59db19c7999cfff52d0a8744542fa843c95354966a18
chaitra#RSK-IND-BLR-L06:~/dockers$ sudo docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
chaitra#RSK-IND-BLR-L06:~/dockers$ sudo docker run -d -t -i test_again1.0 bash
c3d6a9529fd70c5b2dc2d7e90fe662d19c6dad8549e9c812fb2b7ce2105d7ff5
chaitra#RSK-IND-BLR-L06:~/dockers$ sudo docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
c3d6a9529fd7 test_again1.0 "bash" 2 seconds ago Up 1 second awesome_haibt
You can simply use:
docker container run -d -it <container name or id> /bin/bash
I have explained it in the following post that has the same question.
How to retain docker alpine container after "exit" is used?
I was also facing the same problem but in a different manner. When I create the docker containers. it automatically stops the unused containers which are just running in the background. Sometimes it also stops the containers that are in the use.
In my situation, this is because of the permission of the docker.sock files it earlier has.
what you have to do is :-
Install docker again.(As i work on ubuntu i install it from here)
Run the command to change the permissions.
sudo chmod 666 /var/run/docker.sock
Install docker-compose (this is optional as I have compose file to create many containers together)
sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.26.0/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
check for the version to ensure that I have the latest one and not get problem with some deprications.
Then I run the docker container build.
Argument order matters
Jersey Beans answer (all 3 examples) worked for me. After quite a bit of trial and error I realized that the order of the arguments matter.
Keeps the container running in the background:
docker run -t -d <image-name>
Keeps the container running in the foreground: docker run <image-name> -t -d
It wasn't obvious to me coming from a Powershell background.
if you want to operate on the container, you need to run it in foreground to keep it alive.
There are multiple options out there to run the container in foreground/detached state. But if you still feel the issue is not resolved, you can try troubleshooting the issue by viewing the logs.
sudo docker logs -f >> container.log
additionally you can also use --details to show extra details provided to logs.
Incorrect Path to App in Dockerfile:
I was migrating an application from a RHEL server to a Docker container using Alpine Linux.
No errors during the build, so I was surprised to see the container immediately exit!
First port of call:
docker logs <containerID>
This revealed the path of the binary I had supplied to CMD in the Dockerfile was bogus:
line 0: /sbin/postfix: not found
Well that told me how things were broken, but not specifically where: I still required the correct path for the binary in Alpine Linux...
Troubleshooting:
Googling didn't reveal the correct path to it, so I added the following line to my Dockerfile:
RUN which postfix
I then reviewed my build logging- provided by the below command appended to my build command- to retrieve the value of RUN which postfix
--progress=plain > /path/to/build.log 2>&1
The Fix:
I deleted this test build, supplied the correct path- /usr/sbin/postfix - to CMD in the Dockerfile, deleted RUN which postfix and ran another build.
Voila; the process now remained up.
So a duff path was causing the container to immediately exit...
These 4 commands all work to keep your docker container running:
docker run -td centos
docker run -dt centos
docker run -t -d centos
docker run -d -t centos
Firstly, You need to check if any container is running
Type command,
docker ps -all
If any container is running then stop them
Type command,
docker stop Container Id
Now, Finally run the docker by using below command..........
docker run -t -p 2020:3000 dockerImageName
Hence, Open your google chrome and visit on localhost:2020
Congrats :)
I have run several containers from an image in different ports, but I cant stop or remove these containers. I have run this command:
# sudo docker rm -f f85956145f61
And no message are displayed, however container is still displayed.
I have tried with these commands:
# docker stop $(docker ps -a -q)
# docker rm $(docker ps -a -q)
But I get the following error:
# Get http:///var/run/docker.sock/v1.15/containers/json?all=1: dial unix /var/run/docker.sock: permission denied
So, how can I remove all containers from my docker?
I don't know if you are trying to stop the container as root, but if not try to stop/kill the container as root or using sudo.
$ sudo docker kill $(docker ps -q)
$ sudo docker rm $(docker ps -a -q)
If this does not work try restarting docker service
$ sudo service docker restart
and then try again to stop and delete the container. If it doesn't work you can try to kill the process(es) running inside the container from your host machine.
And to reference the container in docker kill, docker stop, docker rm,... and so on, you can either specify the container id or the container name, both are valid.
Another reason for this happening is that the daemon is busy committing the container.