Docker ssh, back to container showing unexpected results - docker

Question

I'm studying the Docker documentation, but I'm having a hard time understanding the concept of creating a container, ssh, and ssh back.
I created a container with
docker run -ti ubuntu /bin/bash
Then, it starts the container and I can run commands. docker ps gives me
$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
0e37da213a37 ubuntu "/bin/bash" About a minute ago Up About a minute keen_sammet
The issue is after I exit the container I can't ssh back.
I tried docker attach that gives me Error: No such container and I tried docker exec -ti <container>/bin/bash that gives me the same message Error: No such container
How do I run and ssh back to the container?

Answer 1

When you exit the bash process, the container exits (in general, a container will exit when the foreground process exits). The error message you are seeing is accurately describing the situation (the container is no longer running).
If you want to be able to docker exec into a container, you will want to run some sort of persistent command. For example, if you were to run:
docker run -ti -d --name mycontainer ubuntu bash
This would start a "detached" container. That means you've started bash, but it's just hanging around doing nothing. You could use docker exec to start a new process in this container:
$ docker exec -it mycontainer ps -fe
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
root 1 0 0 16:28 pts/0 00:00:00 bash
root 17 0 0 16:28 pts/1 00:00:00 ps -fe
Or:
$ docker exec -it mycontainer bash
There's really no reason to start bash as the main process in this case, since you're not interacting with it. You can just as easily run...
docker run -ti -d --name mycontainer ubuntu sleep inf
...and the behavior would be the same.
The most common use case for all of this is when your docker run command starts up some sort of persistent service (like a web server, or a database server, etc), and then you use docker exec to perform diagnostic or maintenance tasks.
The docker attach command will re-connect you with the primary console of a detached container. In other words, if we return to the initial example:
docker run -ti -d --name mycontainer ubuntu bash
You could connect to that bash process (instead of starting a new one) by running:
docker attach mycontainer
At this point, exit would cause the container to exit.

Answer 2

First, you don't ssh to a docker container (unless you have a sshd process in that container). But you can execute a command with docker exec -ti mycontainer bash -l
But you can exec a command only on running container. If the container exited already you must use another approach : create an image from the container and run a new one.
Here is an example. First I create a container and create a file within then I exit it.
$ docker run -ti debian:9-slim bash -l
root#09f889e80153:/# echo aaaaaaaaaa > /zzz
root#09f889e80153:/# cat /zzz
aaaaaaaaaa
root#09f889e80153:/# exit
logout
As you can see the container is exited (Exited (0) 24 seconds ago)
$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
09f889e80153 debian:9-slim "bash -l" 45 seconds ago Exited (0) 24 seconds ago thirsty_hodgkin
So I create a new image with docker commit
$ docker commit 09f889e80153 bla
sha256:6ceb88470326d2da4741099c144a11a00e7eb1f86310cfa745e8d3441ac9639e
So I can run a new container that contains previous container content.
$ docker run -ti bla bash -l
root#479a0af3d197:/# cat zzz
aaaaaaaaaa