How to get an artifact generated from a container? - docker

I have a Dockerfile dedicated to run my unit test, but i am not sure how i am supposed to get the coverage directory it generates (inside the container).
I would like to be able to get it as an artifact to be able to analyze it, but is it possible since it is generated from the container?

Use docker cp command
If you want to copy the /tmp/foo directory from a container to the existing /tmp directory on your host. If you run docker cp in your ~ (home) directory on the local host:
$ docker cp container_name:tmp/foo /tmp
Docker creates a /tmp/foo directory on your host.
If your container dies after executing you can map a volume from you host to the container, in this way you will have your data in your host after the container dies.
VOLUME ["/home/data"]
This will map /home/data in your machine with /home/data in your container, adjust at will.
More info
https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/builder/#notes-about-specifying-volumes

Related

Is it possible to "open" vscode to see the contents of a docker container?

I have a docker image, and I am running it now (finishing with bash)
When I do, I have a file structure inside the container.
However, this is not some file structure mapped (with -v) from outside the container. These files and folders exist only inside the container.
My question is, since it is bothersome to be opening each file with vi and navigating from the terminal, is there a way that I can open vscode on these files?
Be aware that these files do not exist outside the container
I found how to do it from this link
However I used the "attach to running container" command
I rarely do that but when I have to I usually mount an empty volume to the container, then exec into the container copy the folder which I need into that empty volume, which is then replicated on my host machine. From my host machine I then open it in vscode.
However please be careful if you have sensitive information in that container, not to expose something by accident.
So the steps are:
Create empty volume ( docker-compose example )
Note do not overwrite the folder/file which you want to extract. containerpath is path which does not exist in the container prior to creating it.
volume:
- ./hostpath:/containerpath
Find docker id so that you can use it to exec into it:
docker ps
Exec into the container:
docker exec -it <container_id> /bin/sh
Copy the file/folder to that empty volume:
cp -r folder containerpath
Exit the container and look at your files in ./hostpath folder.

Docker volume bind empty volume or convert files to folders

I'm running a container by sending to docker daemon so it can run a sibling container and in that container I try to run another container and mount a volume to access some data, however in the sibling container, the volume is either empty or the file is converted to a folder...
Running the first container:
$ docker run -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -it example /bin/bash
root#3aa35965846a:/home/node/example# ls some_volume/
test.txt
root#3aa35965846a:/home/node/example# cat some_volume/test.txt
hello
// Running the second container
root#3aa35965846a:/home/node/example# docker run -v /home/node/example/some_volume/:/some_volume/ -it node:10 /bin/bash
root#6a84739fbb92:/# ls /some_volume/
* test.txt
root#6a84739fbb92:/# cat /some_volume/test.txt/
cat: /some_volume/test.txt/: Is a directory
The first time I run the second container the volume is empty, if I try to mount a file directly it is converted to a folder, and after that if I try to mount the folder like the example above, there is only the file I tried to mount earlier and it is a folder.
How is this possible ? If i try to mount a volume outside the first container I don't have any problem, how can I fix this ?
The first path in the docker run -v option is always on the host system. For example, if you
docker run -v /etc:/x busybox cat /x/shadow
it will dump out the host's encrypted password file, regardless of whether you ran this command directly from the host or from a container.
There isn't a way to share an arbitrary directory from one container to another. If the launching container knows something about its own directory structure (in particular that some directory was mounted from a specific host path or named volume) then it can replicate that to the other container, but that's not a generic answer. The other behaviors you're seeing are just a consequence of those directories not existing on the host system.
In general I would advise not using Docker for short-lived processes that principally interact with the outside world through the filesystem. Take whatever program you'd run in the other container, install it in your image's Dockerfile, and run it directly without going through Docker.
If you really can't avoid this workflow, the only thing I've found to work reliably is to docker create the container, docker cp files in, docker start it, and docker wait for it to finish. When it's done, docker cp the result out before docker rm it. That's a kind of painstaking workflow but it gets around the problem of the two containers not sharing any filesystem space.

-v deleted all the data from the docker container

I made a docker image called myImage, there is a folder: /data I want to let the user edit it by themselves. I read that -v flag can mount the volume, so I used it like following:
I run the container with this command:
docker run -v /my_local_path:/data -it myImage /bin/bash
But surprisingly, docker cleared all the files in /data in the container. But this is not I want... I want actually the host can get all the files from /data... :(
How can I do that?
When you share a volume like this, the volume on the host overwrites the volume in the container, so the files in the container's folder will be removed.
What you need to do is put the files in the container in folder A (a folder in the container). Mount folder B (another folder in the container). Then AFTER the volume is mounted, move the files from folder A to folder B. Then these files will be both available to the host and inside the container.
You can achieve this 'move files' operation using a RUN or an ENTRYPOINT script in your Dockerfile.
See Run a script in Dockerfile
Sorry, I forget if you need RUN or ENTRYPOINT (or if either will work) but one of these will definitely do it.
I think you want ENTRYPOINT because an ENTRYPOINT script runs AFTER the container is created. Thus it will run after the volume is mounted.

Accessing the container file system from host non root

How do I access a folder on the Container from host.
I start a container, and lets say I want to see on host the contents of the container's /home.
Without being root and going to the docker overlay file system to see what is there. But of course I am in group docker and can ask docker to make the neccessary actions.
What if I wish to mount the /home of the container to /test on the host?
I want to avoid mounting a host path into the container and copying from there since I dont want to allow the container to write to host, but the host will copy the content by himself.
How could I achieve this?
I'll answer two questions:
2) To see the contents of a directory inside the container, use docker exec command.
Here is an example of how to:
# docker run -it --rm --name test_con ubuntu:16.04 /bin/bash
You can then open a new terminal session and run the command.
# docker exec test_con ls /home
Replace test_con with the name or ID of your container and ls /home with any command you want to be executed on the container without attaching to its console.
3) You can use docker cp command to copy files/folders between a container and the local filesystem. Using above container as an example, you’ll run a command like this:
# docker cp test_con:/home /test
Where /test is a directory on the host system. It will be automatically created if it doesn't exist.
Your question 2 and 4 seem to be duplicate of the other two.

How to mount a directory in a Docker container to the host?

Assume that i have an application with this simple Dockerfile:
//...
RUN configure.sh --logmyfiles /var/lib/myapp
ENTRYPOINT ["starter.sh"]
CMD ["run"]
EXPOSE 8080
VOLUME ["/var/lib/myapp"]
And I run a container from that:
sudo docker run -d --name myapp -p 8080:8080 myapp:latest
So it works properly and stores some logs in /var/lib/myapp of docker container.
My question
I need these log files to automatically saved in host too, So how can i mount the /var/lib/myapp from the container to the /var/lib/myapp in host server (without removing current container) ?
Edit
I also see Docker - Mount Directory From Container to Host, but it doesn't solve my problem i need a way to backup my files from docker to host.
First, a little information about Docker volumes. Volume mounts occur only at container creation time. That means you cannot change volume mounts after you've started the container. Also, volume mounts are one-way only: From the host to the container, and not vice-versa. When you specify a host directory mounted as a volume in your container (for example something like: docker run -d --name="foo" -v "/path/on/host:/path/on/container" ubuntu), it is a "regular ole" linux mount --bind, which means that the host directory will temporarily "override" the container directory. Nothing is actually deleted or overwritten on the destination directory, but because of the nature of containers, that effectively means it will be overridden for the lifetime of the container.
So, you're left with two options (maybe three). You could mount a host directory into your container and then copy those files in your startup script (or if you bring cron into your container, you could use a cron to periodically copy those files to that host directory volume mount).
You could also use docker cp to move files from your container to your host. Now that is kinda hacky and definitely not something you should use in your infrastructure automation. But it does work very well for that exact purpose. One-off or debugging is a great situation for that.
You could also possibly set up a network transfer, but that's pretty involved for what you're doing. However, if you want to do this regularly for your log files (or whatever), you could look into using something like rsyslog to move those files off your container.
So how can i mount the /var/lib/myapp from the container to the /var/lib/myapp in host server
That is the opposite: you can mount an host folder to your container on docker run.
(without removing current container)
I don't think so.
Right now, you can check docker inspect <containername> and see if you see your log in the /var/lib/docker/volumes/... associated to the volume from your container.
Or you can redirect the result of docker logs <containername> to an host file.
For more example, see this gist.
The alternative would be to mount a host directory as the log folder and then access the log files directly on the host.
me#host~$ docker run -d -p 80:80 -v <sites-enabled-dir>:/etc/nginx/sites-enabled -v <certs-dir>:/etc/nginx/certs -v <log-dir>:/var/log/nginx dockerfile/nginx
me#host~$ ls <log-dir>
(again, that apply to a container that you start, not an existing running one)

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