I often find myself in need of re-creating container with minor modifications to arguments used to docker run container originally (things like changing published ports, network, memory amount).
Now I am making images and running them in place of old containers.
This works fine but I don't always have original params to docker run saved and sometimes (esp. when there are lot of things to define) it becomes pain to recover them.
Is there any way to recover docker run arguments from existing container?
Sorry for being a couple of years late, but I had a similar question and no satisfying answer yet, so I still needed to find my way out.
I've found two sources addressing the issue:
A gist
To run, save this to a file, e.g. run.tpl and do docker inspect --format "$(<run.tpl)" name_or_id_of_running_container
A docker image
Quick run:
$ docker run --rm -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock nexdrew/rekcod <container>
Both solutions are quite simple to use, but the second one failed to generate the command for an Nginx container because they did not manage to have it quoted like this "nginx" "-g" "daemon off;"
So, I focused on the first solution, which is a golang template intended to feed the --format parameter of docker inspect. I liked it because it was kind of simple, elegant, and no other tool needed.
I've made some improvements in my forked gist and notified the original author about it.
Couple of answers to this. Run your containers using docker-compose, then you can just run compose files and retain all your configuration. Obviously compose is designed for multi-container applications, but massively underrated for single-container, complex run argument use cases.
Second one is to put your run command into a LABEL on the image. Take a look at Label Schema's docker.cmd etc... Then you can easily retrieve from the image (or from your Dockerfile).
the best way to do this is not to type the commands manually. put them into a shell script... a .sh file on linux/mac, or a .cmd file on windows. then you just run the shell script to create your container and you never have to worry about re-typing the commands and options, you'll never get them wrong, etc.
personally, i write my scripts with "npm scripts" in my package.json file. but the same thing can be done with any tool that can run command-line program with arguments
i do this along with a few other tricks to make sure i never fail to build my images or run my containers. makes life with docker soooo much easier. :)
You can use docker inspect to get the container's configuration. Reconstructing the docker run command from that can be somewhat tedious though.
Another option is to search your shell history using either history | grep "docker run" or ctrl+r (if you use bash). That way, you don't need to go out of your way to save the commands but can still recover them quickly.
Related
I've checked on SO but couldn't find a exhaustive answer.
My docker-composer.yml defines few things including volumes
app:
volumes:
- "./:/app"
...
If I use docker run to instance the image, then I will need to specify again the same volumes specified in docker-compose.yml.
docker run -v "./:/app"
That might be desirable for some use cases, but in general having the same definition specified in 2 different places is not really maintainable (or obvious for future devs). I'd like to avoid defining the same config in different locations (one for docker-compose and one as arguments for docker run).
Can it be stated that if configuring volumes (or others parameters) inside docker-compose.yml then, in order to have them, the image should be run via docker-compose up rather than docker run -v redundant:volume:specification?
Note: I am asking about best practices more than personal opinions.
You should think of the docker-compose.yml as not unlike a very specialized shell script that runs docker run for you. It's not a bad idea to try to minimize the number of require mounts and options (for example, don't bind-mount code over the code in your image) but it's also not especially a best practice to say "this is only runnable via this docker-compose.yml file".
Also consider that there are other ways to run a container, with different syntaxes. Both Kubernetes and Hashicorp's Nomad have very different syntaxes, and can't reuse the docker-compose.yml. If you're running the image in a different context, you'll basically have to rewrite this configuration anyways.
In limited scopes – "for this development project, in this environment, in this specific repository" – it's reasonable enough to say "the standard way to run this with standard options is via docker-compose up", but it's still possible to run the image a different way if you need to.
In general one should rely on docker-compose, once starting to use it, since just relying on docker <cmd> might miss some configuration and give unexpected results (especially if freshly landing on the project and not having confidence with it).
Executing the images with docker run will lead to the following disadvantages:
having to remember adding eventual parameters at each run, that are instead implicit into with docker-compose
even when remembering, or having a bash script calling docker run with the right parameters, future changes to these parameters will need to be reflected in two different places. This is not very maintainable and error prone.
eventual other correlated images will not run and one has to remember to run them manually; or add them into a script, ending again with definition in two different places.
However, for a broader view considering other runners (k8s) check David Maze's answer.
Let's say I make a container with some flags. For instance,
docker run -v my_volume:/data my_cool_image
Now, let's say my_cool_image is updated to a new version. Is there a nice way to make a new container with the same -v flag as the old one? The container has been properly configured so that the data does not get stored in the container, so deleting the old container is not a concern.
The best solution I can find is to use docker-compose, but that seems a bit silly for single-container systems.
I'd use a shell script or a Docker Compose YAML file. (Compose isn't really overkill; if you add some error handling and write out one option per line for readability, the shell script and the YAML file wind up being about the same length.)
There's nothing built in to Docker that can extract the docker run options from an existing container.
Summary
So I'm trying to figure out a way to use docker to be able to spin up testing environments for customers rather easily. Basically, I've got a customized piece of software that want to install to a Windows docker container (microsoft/windowsservercore), and I need to be able to access the program folder for that software (C:\Program Files\SOFTWARE_NAME) as it has some logs, imports/exports, and other miscellaneous configuration files. The installation part was easy, and I figured that after a few hours of messing around with docker and learning how it works, but transferring files in a simple manner is proving far more difficult than I would expect. I'm well aware of the docker cp command, but I'd like something that allows for the files to be viewed in a file browser to allow testers to quickly/easily view log/configuration files from the container.
Background (what I've tried):
I've spent 20+ hours monkeying around with running an SSH server on the docker container, so I could just ssh in and move files back and forth, but I've had no luck. I've spent most of my time trying to configure OpenSSH, and I can get it installed, but there appears to be something wrong with the default configuration file provided with my installation, as I can't get it up and running unless I start it manually via command line by running sshd -d. Strangely, this runs just fine, but it isn't really a viable solution as it is running in debug mode and shuts down as soon as the connection is closed. I can provide more detail on what I've tested with this, but it seems like it might be a dead end (even though I feel like this should be extremely simple). I've followed every guide I can find (though half are specific to linux containers), and haven't gotten any of them to work, and half the posts I've found just say "why would you want to use ssh when you can just use the built in docker commands". I want to use ssh because it's simpler from an end user's perspective, and I'd rather tell a tester to ssh to a particular IP than make them interact with docker via the command line.
EDIT: Using OpenSSH
Starting server using net start sshd, which reports it starting successfully, however, the service stops immediately if I haven't generated at least an RSA or DSA key using:
ssh-keygen.exe -f "C:\\Program Files\\OpenSSH-Win64/./ssh_host_rsa_key" -t rsa
And modifying the permissions using:
icacls "C:\Program Files\OpenSSH-Win64/" /grant sshd:(OI)(CI)F /T
and
icacls "C:\Program Files\OpenSSH-Win64/" /grant ContainerAdministrator:(OI)(CI)F /T
Again, I'm using the default supplied sshd_config file, but I've tried just about every adjustment of those settings I can find and none of them help.
I also attempted to setup Volumes to do this, but because the installation of our software is done at compile time in docker, the folder that I want to map as a volume is already populated with files, which seems to make docker fail when I try to start the container with the volume attached. This section of documentation seems to say this should be possible, but I can't get it to work. Keep getting errors when I try to start the container saying "the directory is not empty".
EDIT: Command used:
docker run -it -d -p 9999:9092 --mount source=my_volume,destination=C:/temp my_container
Running this on a ProxMox VM.
At this point, I'm running out of ideas, and something that I feel like should be incredibly simple is taking me far too many hours to figure out. It particularly frustrates me that I see so many blog posts saying "Just use the built in docker cp command!" when that is honestly a pretty bad solution when you're going to be browsing lots of files and viewing/editing them. I really need a method that allows the files to be viewed in a file browser/notepad++.
Is there something obvious here that I'm missing? How is this so difficult? Any help is appreciated.
So after a fair bit more troubleshooting, I was unable to get the docker volume to initialize on an already populated folder, even though the documentation suggests it should be possible.
So, I instead decided to try to start the container with the volume linked to an empty folder, and then start the installation script for the program after the container is running, so the folder populates after the volume is already linked. This worked perfectly! There's a bit of weirdness if you leave the files in the volume and then try to restart the container, as it will overwrite most of the files, but things like logs and files not created by the installer will remain, so we'll have to figure out some process for managing that, but it works just like I need it to, and then I can use windows sharing to access that volume folder from anywhere on the network.
Here's how I got it working, it's actually very simple.
So in my dockerfile, I added a batch script that unzips the installation DVD that is copied to the container, and runs the installer after extracting. I then used the CMD option to run this on container start:
Dockerfile
FROM microsoft/windowsservercore
ADD DVD.zip C:\\resources\\DVD.zip
ADD config.bat C:\\resources\\config.bat
CMD "C:\resources\config.bat" && cmd
Then I build the container without anything special:
docker build -t my_container:latest .
And run it with the attachment to the volume:
docker run -it -d -p 9999:9092 --mount source=my_volume,destination="C:/Program Files (x86)/{PROGRAM NAME}" my_container
And that's it. Unfortunately, the container takes a little longer to start (it does build faster though, for what that's worth, as it isn't running the installer in the build), and the program isn't installed/running for another 5 minutes or so after the container does start, but it works!
I can provide more details if anyone needs them, but most of the rest is implementation specific and fairly straightforward.
Try this with Docker composer. Unfortunately, I cannot test it as I'm using a Mac it's not a "supported platform" (way to go Windows). See if that works, if not try volume line like this instead - ./my_volume:C:/tmp/
Dockerfile
FROM microsoft/windowsservercore
# need to ecape \
WORKDIR C:\\tmp\\
# Add the program from host machine to container
ADD ["<source>", "C:\tmp"]
# Normally used with web servers
# EXPOSE 80
# Running the program
CMD ["C:\tmp\program.exe", "any-parameter"]
Docker Composer
Should ideally be in the parent folder.
version: "3"
services:
windows:
build: ./folder-of-Dockerfile
volume:
- type: bind
source: ./my_volume
target: C:/tmp/
ports:
- 9999:9092
Folder structure
|---docker-composer.yml
|
|---folder-of-Dockerfile
|
|---Dockerfile
Just run docker-composer up to build and start the container. Use -d for detach mode, should only use once you know its working properly.
Useful link Manage Windows Dockerfile
I'm trying to create a Docker container based on CentOS 7 that will host R, shiny-server, and rstudio-server, but to I need to have systemd in order for the services to start. I can use the systemd enabled centos image as a basis, but then I need to run the container in privileged mode and allow access to /sys/fs/cgroup on the host. I might be able to tolerate the less secure situation, but then I'm not able to share the container with users running Docker on Windows or Mac.
I found this question but it is 2 years old and doesn't seem to have any resolution.
Any tips or alternatives are appreciated.
UPDATE: SUCCESS!
Here's what I found: For shiny-server, I only needed to execute shiny-server with the appropriate parameters from the command line. I captured the appropriate call into a script file and call that using the final CMD line in my Dockerfile.
rstudio-server was more tricky. First, I needed to install initscripts to get the dependencies in place so that some of the rstudio scripts would work. After this, executing rstudio-server start would essentially do nothing and provide no error. I traced the call through the various links and found myself in /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/rstudio-server. The daemonCmd() function tests cat /proc/1/comm to determine how to start the server. For some reason it was failing, but looking at the script, it seems clear that it needs to execute /etc/init.d/rstudio-server start. If I do that manually or in a Docker CMD line, it seems to work.
I've taken those two CMD line requirements and put them into an sh script that gets called from a CMD line in the Dockerfile.
A bit of a hack, but not bad. I'm happy to hear any other suggestions.
You don't necessarily need to use an init system like systemd.
Essentially, you need to start multiple services, there are existing patterns for this. Check out this page about how to use supervisord to achieve the same thing: https://docs.docker.com/engine/admin/using_supervisord/
I'm trying to automate the following loop with Docker: spawn a container, do some work inside of it (more than one single command), get some data out of the container.
Something along the lines of:
for ( i = 0; i < 10; i++ )
spawn a container
wget revision-i
do something with it and store results in results.txt
According to the documentation I should go with:
for ( ... )
docker run <image> <long; list; of; instructions; separated; by; semicolon>
Unfortunately, this approach is not attractive nor maintanable as the list of instructions grows in complexity.
Wrapping the instructions in a script as in docker run <image> /bin/bash script.sh doesn't work either since I want to spawn a new container for every iteration of the loop.
To sum up:
Is there any sensible way to run a complex series of
commands as described above inside the same container?
Once some data are saved inside a container in, say, /home/results.txt,
and the container returns, how do I get results.txt? The only way I
can think of is to commit the container and tar the file out of the
new image. Is there a more efficient way to do it?
Bonus: should I use vanilla LXC instead? I don't have any experience with it though so I'm not sure.
Thanks.
I eventually came up with a solution that works for me and greatly improved my Docker experience.
Long story short: I used a combination of Fabric and a container running sshd.
Details:
The idea is to spawn container(s) with sshd running using Fabric's local, and run commands on the containers using Fabric's run.
To give a (Python) example, you might have a Container class with:
1) a method to locally spawn a new container with sshd up and running, e.g.
local('docker run -d -p 22 your/image /usr/sbin/sshd -D')
2) set the env parameters needed by Fabric to connect to the running container - check Fabric's tutorial for more on this
3) write your methods to run everything you want in the container exploiting Fabric's run, e.g.
run('uname -on')
Oh, and if you like Ruby better you can achieve the same using Capistrano.
Thanks to #qkrijger (+1'd) for putting me on the right track :)
On question 2.
I don't know if this is the best way, but you could install SSH on you image and use that. For more information on this, you can check out this page from the documentation.
You post 2 questions in one. Maybe you should put 2. in a different post. I will consider 1. here.
It is unclear to me whether you want to spawn a new container for every iteration (as you say first) or if you want to "run a complex series of commands as described above inside the same container?" as you say later.
If you want to spawn multiple containers I would expect you to have a script on your machine handling that.
If you need to pass an argument to your container (like i): there is being work done on passing arguments currently. See https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/pull/1015 (and https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/pull/1015/files for documentation change which is not online yet).