Docker: How to clear the logs properly for a Docker container? - docker

I use docker logs [container-name] to see the logs of a specific container.
Is there an elegant way to clear these logs?

First the bad answer. From this question there's a one-liner that you can run:
echo "" > $(docker inspect --format='{{.LogPath}}' <container_name_or_id>)
instead of echo, there's the simpler:
: > $(docker inspect --format='{{.LogPath}}' <container_name_or_id>)
or there's the truncate command:
truncate -s 0 $(docker inspect --format='{{.LogPath}}' <container_name_or_id>)
I'm not a big fan of either of those since they modify Docker's files directly. The external log deletion could happen while docker is writing json formatted data to the file, resulting in a partial line, and breaking the ability to read any logs from the docker logs cli. For an example of that happening, see this comment on duketwo's answer:
after emptying the logfile, I get this error: error from daemon in stream: Error grabbing logs: invalid character '\x00' looking for beginning of value
Instead, you can have Docker automatically rotate the logs for you. This is done with additional flags to dockerd if you are using the default JSON logging driver:
dockerd ... --log-opt max-size=10m --log-opt max-file=3
You can also set this as part of your daemon.json file instead of modifying your startup scripts:
{
"log-driver": "json-file",
"log-opts": {"max-size": "10m", "max-file": "3"}
}
These options need to be configured with root access. Make sure to run a systemctl reload docker after changing this file to have the settings applied. This setting will then be the default for any newly created containers. Note, existing containers need to be deleted and recreated to receive the new log limits.
Similar log options can be passed to individual containers to override these defaults, allowing you to save more or fewer logs on individual containers. From docker run this looks like:
docker run --log-driver json-file --log-opt max-size=10m --log-opt max-file=3 ...
or in a compose file:
version: '3.7'
services:
app:
image: ...
logging:
options:
max-size: "10m"
max-file: "3"
For additional space savings, you can switch from the json log driver to the "local" log driver. It takes the same max-size and max-file options, but instead of storing in json it uses a binary syntax that is faster and smaller. This allows you to store more logs in the same sized file. The daemon.json entry for that looks like:
{
"log-driver": "local",
"log-opts": {"max-size": "10m", "max-file": "3"}
}
The downside of the local driver is external log parsers/forwarders that depended on direct access to the json logs will no longer work. So if you use a tool like filebeat to send to Elastic, or Splunk's universal forwarder, I'd avoid the "local" driver.
I've got a bit more on this in my Tips and Tricks presentation.

Use:
truncate -s 0 /var/lib/docker/containers/**/*-json.log
You may need sudo
sudo sh -c "truncate -s 0 /var/lib/docker/containers/**/*-json.log"
ref. Jeff S. Docker: How to clear the logs properly for a Docker container?
Reference: Truncating a file while it's being used (Linux)

On Docker for Windows and Mac, and probably others too, it is possible to use the tail option. For example:
docker logs -f --tail 100
This way, only the last 100 lines are shown, and you don't have first to scroll through 1M lines...
(And thus, deleting the log is probably unnecessary)

sudo sh -c "truncate -s 0 /var/lib/docker/containers/*/*-json.log"

You can set up logrotate to clear the logs periodically.
Example file in /etc/logrotate.d/docker-logs
/var/lib/docker/containers/*/*.log {
rotate 7
daily
compress
size=50M
missingok
delaycompress
copytruncate
}

You can also supply the log-opts parameters on the docker run command line, like this:
docker run --log-opt max-size=10m --log-opt max-file=5 my-app:latest
or in a docker-compose.yml like this
my-app:
image: my-app:latest
logging:
driver: "json-file"
options:
max-size: "10m"
max-file: "5"
Credits: https://medium.com/#Quigley_Ja/rotating-docker-logs-keeping-your-overlay-folder-small-40cfa2155412 (James Quigley)

Docker4Mac, a 2018 solution:
LOGPATH=$(docker inspect --format='{{.LogPath}}' <container_name_or_id>)
docker run -it --rm --privileged --pid=host alpine:latest nsenter -t 1 -m -u -n -i -- truncate -s0 $LOGPATH
The first line gets the log file path, similar to the accepted answer.
The second line uses nsenter that allows you to run commands in the xhyve VM that servers as the host for all the docker containers under Docker4Mac. The command we run is the familiar truncate -s0 $LOGPATH from non-Mac answers.
If you're using docker-compose, the first line becomes:
local LOGPATH=$(docker inspect --format='{{.LogPath}}' $(docker-compose ps -q <service>))
and <service> is the service name from your docker-compose.yml file.
Thanks to https://github.com/justincormack/nsenter1 for the nsenter trick.

You can't do this directly through a Docker command.
You can either limit the log's size, or use a script to delete logs related to a container. You can find scripts examples here (read from the bottom): Feature: Ability to clear log history #1083
Check out the logging section of the docker-compose file reference, where you can specify options (such as log rotation and log size limit) for some logging drivers.

Here is a cross platform solution to clearing docker container logs:
docker run --rm -v /var/lib/docker:/var/lib/docker alpine sh -c "echo '' > $(docker inspect --format='{{.LogPath}}' CONTAINER_NAME)"
Paste this into your terminal and change CONTAINER_NAME to desired container name or id.

As a root user, try to run the following:
> /var/lib/docker/containers/*/*-json.log
or
cat /dev/null > /var/lib/docker/containers/*/*-json.log
or
echo "" > /var/lib/docker/containers/*/*-json.log

On my Ubuntu servers even as sudo I would get Cannot open ‘/var/lib/docker/containers/*/*-json.log’ for writing: No such file or directory
But combing the docker inspect and truncate answers worked :
sudo truncate -s 0 `docker inspect --format='{{.LogPath}}' <container>`

I do prefer this one (from solutions above):
truncate -s 0 /var/lib/docker/containers/*/*-json.log
However I'm running several systems (Ubuntu 18.x Bionic for example), where this path does not work as expected. Docker is installed through Snap, so the path to containers is more like:
truncate -s 0 /var/snap/docker/common/var-lib-docker/containers/*/*-json.log

This will delete all logfiles for all containers:
sudo find /var/lib/docker/containers/ -type f -name "*.log" -delete

Thanks to answer by #BMitch, I've just wrote a shell script to clean logs of all the containers:
#!/bin/bash
ids=$(docker ps -a --format='{{.ID}}')
for id in $ids
do
echo $(docker ps -a --format='{{.ID}} ### {{.Names}} ### {{.Image}}' | fgrep $id)
truncate -s 0 $(docker inspect --format='{{.LogPath}}' $id)
ls -llh $(docker inspect --format='{{.LogPath}}' $id)
done

Not sure if this is helpful for you, but removing the container always helps.
So, if you use docker-compose for your setup, you can simply use docker-compose down && docker-compose up -d instead of docker-compose restart. With a proper setup (make sure to use volume mounts for persistent data), you don't lose any data this way.
Sure, this is more than the OP requested. But there are various situations where the other answers cannot help (if using a remote docker server or working on a Windows machine, accessing the underlying filesystem is proprietary and difficult)

Linux/Ubuntu:
If you have several containers and you want to remove just one log but not others.
(If you have issues like "Permission denied" do first sudo su.)
List all containers: docker ps -a
Look for the container you desire and copy the CONTAINER ID. Example: E1X2A3M4P5L6.
Containers folders and real names are longer than E1X2A3M4P5L6 but first 12 characters are those resulted in docker ps -a.
Remove just that log:
> /var/lib/docker/containers/E1X2A3M4P5L6*/E1X2A3M4P5L6*-json.log (Replace E1X2A3M4P5L6 for your result !! )
As you can see, inside /containers are the containers, and logs has the same name but with -json.log at the end. You just need to know that first 12 characters, because * means "anything".

Docker for Mac users, here is the solution:
Find log file path by:
$ docker inspect | grep log
SSH into the docker machine( suppose the name is default, if not, run docker-machine ls to find out):
$ docker-machine ssh default
Change to root user(reference):
$ sudo -i
Delete the log file content:
$ echo "" > log_file_path_from_step1

I needed something I could run as one command, instead of having to write docker ps and copying over each Container ID and running the command multiple times. I've adapted BMitch's answer and thought I'd share in case someone else may find this useful.
Mixing xargs seems to pull off what I need here:
docker ps --format='{{.ID}}' | \
xargs -I {} sh -c 'echo > $(docker inspect --format="{{.LogPath}}" {})'
This grabs each Container ID listed by docker ps (will erase your logs for any container on that list!), pipes it into xargs and then echoes a blank string to replace the log path of the container.

To remove/clear docker container logs we can use below command
$(docker inspect container_id|grep "LogPath"|cut -d """ -f4)
or
$(docker inspect container_name|grep "LogPath"|cut -d """ -f4)

If you need to store a backup of the log files before deleting them, I have created a script that performs the following actions (you have to run it with sudo) for a specified container:
Creates a folder to store compressed log files as backup.
Looks for the running container's id (specified by the container's name).
Copy the container's log file to a new location (folder in step 1) using a random name.
Compress the previous log file (to save space).
Truncates the container's log file by certain size that you can define.
Notes:
It uses the shuf command. Make sure your linux distribution has it or change it to another bash-supported random generator.
Before use, change the variable CONTAINER_NAME to match your running container; it can be a partial name (doesn't have to be the exact matching name).
By default it truncates the log file to 10M (10 megabytes), but you can change this size by modifying the variable SIZE_TO_TRUNCATE.
It creates a folder in the path: /opt/your-container-name/logs, if you want to store the compressed logs somewhere else, just change the variable LOG_FOLDER.
Run some tests before running it in production.
#!/bin/bash
set -ex
############################# Main Variables Definition:
CONTAINER_NAME="your-container-name"
SIZE_TO_TRUNCATE="10M"
############################# Other Variables Definition:
CURRENT_DATE=$(date "+%d-%b-%Y-%H-%M-%S")
RANDOM_VALUE=$(shuf -i 1-1000000 -n 1)
LOG_FOLDER="/opt/${CONTAINER_NAME}/logs"
CN=$(docker ps --no-trunc -f name=${CONTAINER_NAME} | awk '{print $1}' | tail -n +2)
LOG_DOCKER_FILE="$(docker inspect --format='{{.LogPath}}' ${CN})"
LOG_FILE_NAME="${CURRENT_DATE}-${RANDOM_VALUE}"
############################# Procedure:
mkdir -p "${LOG_FOLDER}"
cp ${LOG_DOCKER_FILE} "${LOG_FOLDER}/${LOG_FILE_NAME}.log"
cd ${LOG_FOLDER}
tar -cvzf "${LOG_FILE_NAME}.tar.gz" "${LOG_FILE_NAME}.log"
rm -rf "${LOG_FILE_NAME}.log"
truncate -s ${SIZE_TO_TRUNCATE} ${LOG_DOCKER_FILE}
You can create a cronjob to run the previous script every month. First run:
sudo crontab -e
Type a in your keyboard to enter edit mode. Then add the following line:
0 0 1 * * /your-script-path/script.sh
Hit the escape key to exit Edit mode. Save the file by typing :wq and hitting enter. Make sure the script.sh file has execution permissions.

On computers with docker desktop we use:
truncate -s 0 //wsl.localhost/docker-desktop-data/data/docker/containers/*/*-json.log
For linux distributions you can use this it works for me with this path:
truncate -s 0 /var/lib/docker/containers/*/*-json.log

docker system prune
run this command in command prompt

Related

Can a process in Docker container run a command in the host? [duplicate]

How to control host from docker container?
For example, how to execute copied to host bash script?
This answer is just a more detailed version of Bradford Medeiros's solution, which for me as well turned out to be the best answer, so credit goes to him.
In his answer, he explains WHAT to do (named pipes) but not exactly HOW to do it.
I have to admit I didn't know what named pipes were when I read his solution. So I struggled to implement it (while it's actually very simple), but I did succeed.
So the point of my answer is just detailing the commands you need to run in order to get it working, but again, credit goes to him.
PART 1 - Testing the named pipe concept without docker
On the main host, chose the folder where you want to put your named pipe file, for instance /path/to/pipe/ and a pipe name, for instance mypipe, and then run:
mkfifo /path/to/pipe/mypipe
The pipe is created.
Type
ls -l /path/to/pipe/mypipe
And check the access rights start with "p", such as
prw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 mypipe
Now run:
tail -f /path/to/pipe/mypipe
The terminal is now waiting for data to be sent into this pipe
Now open another terminal window.
And then run:
echo "hello world" > /path/to/pipe/mypipe
Check the first terminal (the one with tail -f), it should display "hello world"
PART 2 - Run commands through the pipe
On the host container, instead of running tail -f which just outputs whatever is sent as input, run this command that will execute it as commands:
eval "$(cat /path/to/pipe/mypipe)"
Then, from the other terminal, try running:
echo "ls -l" > /path/to/pipe/mypipe
Go back to the first terminal and you should see the result of the ls -l command.
PART 3 - Make it listen forever
You may have noticed that in the previous part, right after ls -l output is displayed, it stops listening for commands.
Instead of eval "$(cat /path/to/pipe/mypipe)", run:
while true; do eval "$(cat /path/to/pipe/mypipe)"; done
(you can nohup that)
Now you can send unlimited number of commands one after the other, they will all be executed, not just the first one.
PART 4 - Make it work even when reboot happens
The only caveat is if the host has to reboot, the "while" loop will stop working.
To handle reboot, here what I've done:
Put the while true; do eval "$(cat /path/to/pipe/mypipe)"; done in a file called execpipe.sh with #!/bin/bash header
Don't forget to chmod +x it
Add it to crontab by running
crontab -e
And then adding
#reboot /path/to/execpipe.sh
At this point, test it: reboot your server, and when it's back up, echo some commands into the pipe and check if they are executed.
Of course, you aren't able to see the output of commands, so ls -l won't help, but touch somefile will help.
Another option is to modify the script to put the output in a file, such as:
while true; do eval "$(cat /path/to/pipe/mypipe)" &> /somepath/output.txt; done
Now you can run ls -l and the output (both stdout and stderr using &> in bash) should be in output.txt.
PART 5 - Make it work with docker
If you are using both docker compose and dockerfile like I do, here is what I've done:
Let's assume you want to mount the mypipe's parent folder as /hostpipe in your container
Add this:
VOLUME /hostpipe
in your dockerfile in order to create a mount point
Then add this:
volumes:
- /path/to/pipe:/hostpipe
in your docker compose file in order to mount /path/to/pipe as /hostpipe
Restart your docker containers.
PART 6 - Testing
Exec into your docker container:
docker exec -it <container> bash
Go into the mount folder and check you can see the pipe:
cd /hostpipe && ls -l
Now try running a command from within the container:
echo "touch this_file_was_created_on_main_host_from_a_container.txt" > /hostpipe/mypipe
And it should work!
WARNING: If you have an OSX (Mac OS) host and a Linux container, it won't work (explanation here https://stackoverflow.com/a/43474708/10018801 and issue here https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/483 ) because the pipe implementation is not the same, so what you write into the pipe from Linux can be read only by a Linux and what you write into the pipe from Mac OS can be read only by a Mac OS (this sentence might not be very accurate, but just be aware that a cross-platform issue exists).
For instance, when I run my docker setup in DEV from my Mac OS computer, the named pipe as explained above does not work. But in staging and production, I have Linux host and Linux containers, and it works perfectly.
PART 7 - Example from Node.JS container
Here is how I send a command from my Node.JS container to the main host and retrieve the output:
const pipePath = "/hostpipe/mypipe"
const outputPath = "/hostpipe/output.txt"
const commandToRun = "pwd && ls-l"
console.log("delete previous output")
if (fs.existsSync(outputPath)) fs.unlinkSync(outputPath)
console.log("writing to pipe...")
const wstream = fs.createWriteStream(pipePath)
wstream.write(commandToRun)
wstream.close()
console.log("waiting for output.txt...") //there are better ways to do that than setInterval
let timeout = 10000 //stop waiting after 10 seconds (something might be wrong)
const timeoutStart = Date.now()
const myLoop = setInterval(function () {
if (Date.now() - timeoutStart > timeout) {
clearInterval(myLoop);
console.log("timed out")
} else {
//if output.txt exists, read it
if (fs.existsSync(outputPath)) {
clearInterval(myLoop);
const data = fs.readFileSync(outputPath).toString()
if (fs.existsSync(outputPath)) fs.unlinkSync(outputPath) //delete the output file
console.log(data) //log the output of the command
}
}
}, 300);
Use a named pipe.
On the host OS, create a script to loop and read commands, and then you call eval on that.
Have the docker container read to that named pipe.
To be able to access the pipe, you need to mount it via a volume.
This is similar to the SSH mechanism (or a similar socket-based method), but restricts you properly to the host device, which is probably better. Plus you don't have to be passing around authentication information.
My only warning is to be cautious about why you are doing this. It's totally something to do if you want to create a method to self-upgrade with user input or whatever, but you probably don't want to call a command to get some config data, as the proper way would be to pass that in as args/volume into docker. Also, be cautious about the fact that you are evaling, so just give the permission model a thought.
Some of the other answers such as running a script. Under a volume won't work generically since they won't have access to the full system resources, but it might be more appropriate depending on your usage.
The solution I use is to connect to the host over SSH and execute the command like this:
ssh -l ${USERNAME} ${HOSTNAME} "${SCRIPT}"
UPDATE
As this answer keeps getting up votes, I would like to remind (and highly recommend), that the account which is being used to invoke the script should be an account with no permissions at all, but only executing that script as sudo (that can be done from sudoers file).
UPDATE: Named Pipes
The solution I suggested above was only the one I used while I was relatively new to Docker. Now in 2021 take a look on the answers that talk about Named Pipes. This seems to be a better solution.
However, nobody there mentioned anything about security. The script that will evaluate the commands sent through the pipe (the script that calls eval) must actually not use eval for the whole pipe output, but to handle specific cases and call the required commands according to the text sent, otherwise any command that can do anything can be sent through the pipe.
That REALLY depends on what you need that bash script to do!
For example, if the bash script just echoes some output, you could just do
docker run --rm -v $(pwd)/mybashscript.sh:/mybashscript.sh ubuntu bash /mybashscript.sh
Another possibility is that you want the bash script to install some software- say the script to install docker-compose. you could do something like
docker run --rm -v /usr/bin:/usr/bin --privileged -v $(pwd)/mybashscript.sh:/mybashscript.sh ubuntu bash /mybashscript.sh
But at this point you're really getting into having to know intimately what the script is doing to allow the specific permissions it needs on your host from inside the container.
My laziness led me to find the easiest solution that wasn't published as an answer here.
It is based on the great article by luc juggery.
All you need to do in order to gain a full shell to your linux host from within your docker container is:
docker run --privileged --pid=host -it alpine:3.8 \
nsenter -t 1 -m -u -n -i sh
Explanation:
--privileged : grants additional permissions to the container, it allows the container to gain access to the devices of the host (/dev)
--pid=host : allows the containers to use the processes tree of the Docker host (the VM in which the Docker daemon is running)
nsenter utility: allows to run a process in existing namespaces (the building blocks that provide isolation to containers)
nsenter (-t 1 -m -u -n -i sh) allows to run the process sh in the same isolation context as the process with PID 1.
The whole command will then provide an interactive sh shell in the VM
This setup has major security implications and should be used with cautions (if any).
Write a simple server python server listening on a port (say 8080), bind the port -p 8080:8080 with the container, make a HTTP request to localhost:8080 to ask the python server running shell scripts with popen, run a curl or writing code to make a HTTP request curl -d '{"foo":"bar"}' localhost:8080
#!/usr/bin/python
from BaseHTTPServer import BaseHTTPRequestHandler,HTTPServer
import subprocess
import json
PORT_NUMBER = 8080
# This class will handles any incoming request from
# the browser
class myHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
def do_POST(self):
content_len = int(self.headers.getheader('content-length'))
post_body = self.rfile.read(content_len)
self.send_response(200)
self.end_headers()
data = json.loads(post_body)
# Use the post data
cmd = "your shell cmd"
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
p_status = p.wait()
(output, err) = p.communicate()
print "Command output : ", output
print "Command exit status/return code : ", p_status
self.wfile.write(cmd + "\n")
return
try:
# Create a web server and define the handler to manage the
# incoming request
server = HTTPServer(('', PORT_NUMBER), myHandler)
print 'Started httpserver on port ' , PORT_NUMBER
# Wait forever for incoming http requests
server.serve_forever()
except KeyboardInterrupt:
print '^C received, shutting down the web server'
server.socket.close()
If you are not worried about security and you're simply looking to start a docker container on the host from within another docker container like the OP, you can share the docker server running on the host with the docker container by sharing it's listen socket.
Please see https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/security/#docker-daemon-attack-surface and see if your personal risk tolerance allows this for this particular application.
You can do this by adding the following volume args to your start command
docker run -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock ...
or by sharing /var/run/docker.sock within your docker compose file like this:
version: '3'
services:
ci:
command: ...
image: ...
volumes:
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
When you run the docker start command within your docker container,
the docker server running on your host will see the request and provision the sibling container.
credit: http://jpetazzo.github.io/2015/09/03/do-not-use-docker-in-docker-for-ci/
As Marcus reminds, docker is basically process isolation. Starting with docker 1.8, you can copy files both ways between the host and the container, see the doc of docker cp
https://docs.docker.com/reference/commandline/cp/
Once a file is copied, you can run it locally
docker run --detach-keys="ctrl-p" -it -v /:/mnt/rootdir --name testing busybox
# chroot /mnt/rootdir
#
I have a simple approach.
Step 1: Mount /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock (So you will be able to execute docker commands inside your container)
Step 2: Execute this below inside your container. The key part here is (--network host as this will execute from host context)
docker run -i --rm --network host -v /opt/test.sh:/test.sh alpine:3.7
sh /test.sh
test.sh should contain the some commands (ifconfig, netstat etc...) whatever you need.
Now you will be able to get host context output.
You can use the pipe concept, but use a file on the host and fswatch to accomplish the goal to execute a script on the host machine from a docker container. Like so (Use at your own risk):
#! /bin/bash
touch .command_pipe
chmod +x .command_pipe
# Use fswatch to execute a command on the host machine and log result
fswatch -o --event Updated .command_pipe | \
xargs -n1 -I "{}" .command_pipe >> .command_pipe_log &
docker run -it --rm \
--name alpine \
-w /home/test \
-v $PWD/.command_pipe:/dev/command_pipe \
alpine:3.7 sh
rm -rf .command_pipe
kill %1
In this example, inside the container send commands to /dev/command_pipe, like so:
/home/test # echo 'docker network create test2.network.com' > /dev/command_pipe
On the host, you can check if the network was created:
$ docker network ls | grep test2
8e029ec83afe test2.network.com bridge local
In my scenario I just ssh login the host (via host ip) within a container and then I can do anything I want to the host machine
I found answers using named pipes awesome. But I was wondering if there is a way to get the output of the executed command.
The solution is to create two named pipes:
mkfifo /path/to/pipe/exec_in
mkfifo /path/to/pipe/exec_out
Then, the solution using a loop, as suggested by #Vincent, would become:
# on the host
while true; do eval "$(cat exec_in)" > exec_out; done
And then on the docker container, we can execute the command and get the output using:
# on the container
echo "ls -l" > /path/to/pipe/exec_in
cat /path/to/pipe/exec_out
If anyone interested, my need was to use a failover IP on the host from the container, I created this simple ruby method:
def fifo_exec(cmd)
exec_in = '/path/to/pipe/exec_in'
exec_out = '/path/to/pipe/exec_out'
%x[ echo #{cmd} > #{exec_in} ]
%x[ cat #{exec_out} ]
end
# example
fifo_exec "curl https://ip4.seeip.org"
Depending on the situation, this could be a helpful resource.
This uses a job queue (Celery) that can be run on the host, commands/data could be passed to this through Redis (or rabbitmq). In the example below, this is occurring in a django application (which is commonly dockerized).
https://www.codingforentrepreneurs.com/blog/celery-redis-django/
To expand on user2915097's response:
The idea of isolation is to be able to restrict what an application/process/container (whatever your angle at this is) can do to the host system very clearly. Hence, being able to copy and execute a file would really break the whole concept.
Yes. But it's sometimes necessary.
No. That's not the case, or Docker is not the right thing to use. What you should do is declare a clear interface for what you want to do (e.g. updating a host config), and write a minimal client/server to do exactly that and nothing more. Generally, however, this doesn't seem to be very desirable. In many cases, you should simply rethink your approach and eradicate that need. Docker came into an existence when basically everything was a service that was reachable using some protocol. I can't think of any proper usecase of a Docker container getting the rights to execute arbitrary stuff on the host.

View logs for all docker containers simultaneously

I currently use docker for my backend, and when I first start them up with
docker-compose up
I get log outputs of all 4 dockers at once, so I can see how they are interacting with each other when a request comes in. Looking like this, one request going from nginx to couchdb
The issue is now that I am running on GCE with load balancing, when a new VM spins up, it auto starts the dockers and runs normally, I would like to be able to access a load balanced VM and view the live logs, but I can not get docker to allow me this style, when I use logs, it gives me normal all white font with no label of where it came from.
Using
docker events
does nothing, it won't return any info.
tldr; what is the best way to obtain a view, same as the log output you get when running "docker-compose up"
If using docker-compose, you use
docker-compose logs --tail=0 --follow
instead of
docker logs --tail=0 --follow
This will get the output I was originally looking for.
You can see the logs for all running containers with
docker ps -q | xargs -L 1 docker logs
In theory this might work for the --follow too if xargs is ran with -P <count>, where the count is higher than the number of running containers.
I use a variation of this to live tail (--follow) all logs and indicate which log is tailing at the time. This bash includes both stdout and stderr. Note you may need to purge the /tmp dir of *.{log,err} afterwards.
for c in $(docker ps -a --format="{{.Names}}")
do
docker logs -f $c > /tmp/$c.log 2> /tmp/$c.err &
done
tail -f /tmp/*.{log,err}
Hope this helps. Logging has become so problematic these days, and other get-off-my-lawn old man rants...
Try "watch"
Here's a quick and dirty multitail/xtail for docker containers.
watch 'docker ps --format "{{.Names}}" | sort | xargs --verbose --max-args=1 -- docker logs --tail=8 --timestamps'
How this works:
watch to run every few seconds
docker ps --format "{{.Names}}" to get the names of all running containers
sort to sort them
xargs to give these names to docker logs:
docker logs to print the actual logs
Adjust parameter "--tail=8" as needed so that everything still fits on one screen.
The "xargs" methods listed above (in another user's answer) will stop working as containers are stopped and restarted. This "watch" method here does not have that problem. (But it's not great either.)
If you are using Docker Swarm, you can find your services by
docker service ls
Grap the id, and then run
docker service logs $ID -f
if the service is defined with tty: true, then you must run with the --raw flag. Notice, this wont tell you which container is giving the outputted log entry.

Can I alias a subcommand? (shortening the output of `docker ps`)

The docker command has a ps sub-command that emits very long lines:
$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
6e8ec8a16da4 waisbrot/wait:latest "/wait" 4 minutes ago Exited (0) 4 minutes ago wait-for-janus-test
9dbf0739561f whoop/downsampler:master "./run.bash" 4 minutes ago Up 4 minutes 0.0.0.0:32855->4369/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32854->9100/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32853->9101/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32852->9102/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32851->9103/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32850->9104/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32849->9105/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32848->9106/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32847->9107/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32846->9108/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32845->9109/tcp, 0.0.0.0:32844->9110/tcp metrics-downsampler-test
6cf56623bb48 whoop/janus:master "./start.bash" 4 minutes ago Up 4 minutes 0.0.0.0:32843->80/tcp janus-test
882b50303d54 whoop/recalculator:master "./run.bash" 4 minutes ago Exited (1) 4 minutes ago internum-test
It can be instructed to output only specific columns:
docker ps --format "table {{.Image}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Ports}}\t{{.Status}}"
I'd like to be able to say docker ps and get the --format "table..." argument added on for me. Is there a nice way to do this?
I know I could say
alias dp='docker ps --format ...'
but I'd prefer to keep the sub-command.
I'm using zsh as my shell.
You can wrap docker in a function that checks for the specific subcommand and passes everything else through. (The below will actually work with not just zsh, but any POSIX-compliant shell -- a category to which zsh doesn't quite belong).
docker() {
case $1 in
ps)
shift
command docker ps --format 'table {{.Image}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Ports}}\t{{.Status}}' "$#"
;;
*)
command docker "$#";;
esac
}
If you wanted a more generic wrapper function (that doesn't need to know about your specific desired ps logic), that could be done as follows (note that this version is not compatible with baseline POSIX sh due to its use of local; however, this is an extension implemented even by ash and its derivatives):
docker() {
local cmd=$1; shift
if command -v "docker_$cmd" >/dev/null 2>/dev/null; then
"docker_$cmd" "$#"
else
command docker "$cmd" "$#"
fi
}
...after which any subcommand can have its own functions defined, without the wrapper needing to be modified to know about them (you could also create a script in the PATH named docker_ps, or provide the command in any other manner you choose):
docker_ps() {
command docker ps --format 'table {{.Image}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Ports}}\t{{.Status}}' "$#"
}
Using Docker Config
Since this is fundamentally a docker questions, not a bash question, you don't even need an alias. Docker CLI allows you to customize these commands in your own config file! From this great tip from Container 42:
Create or find your docker config file (if you've ever used docker login it should already be created.
~/.docker/config.json
Then add the default formatting for docker to use every time it runs the ps command as a top level property in the config:
{
"psFormat": "table {{.Image}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Ports}}\t{{.Status}}",
}
Then just run docker ps like normal:
PS Format
Docker uses go templates and has a list of the valid placeholders:
Command
Description
.ID
Container ID
.Image
Image ID
.Command
Quoted command
.CreatedAt
Time when the container was created.
.RunningFor
Elapsed time since the container was started.
.Ports
Exposed ports.
.Status
Container status.
.Size
Container disk size.
.Names
Container names.
.Labels
All labels assigned to the container.
.Label
Value of a specific label for this container.
.Mounts
Names of the volumes mounted in this container.
.Networks
Names of the networks attached to this container.
Alternative Solutions / Threads
Github Issues
Default "docker ps" output is too wide
docker ps output is so long it's unreadable
Third Party Commands
ctop - Top-like interface for container metrics
docker-pretty-ps - beautiful, colored, long output log
dockerps - A better docker ps
You can alias subcommands. With aliasing, you still get the nice zsh completions as if you were typing the full command. That's why I prefer them over functions.
The equivalent of your alias is:
alias dp='docker ps --format "table {{.Image}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Ports}}'\t{{.Status}}"
But the full commands seem to now be recommended, and ls has replaced ps, which makes your alias now:
alias dp='docker container ls --format "table {{.Image}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Ports}}'\t{{.Status}}"
It's nice to have docker aliases for everything. For this, I've been working on a set of comprehensive aliases, which would have your alias as something like:
alias ddcls='docker container ls --format "table {{.Image}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Ports}}\t{{.Status}}"
In my case, I needed to disable only docker login command (some folks used that command on our CI-runner breaking a generic config file for docker).
So, I added to my .bashrc:
_docker() {
if [ "$1" = "login" ]; then
echo "login is disabled, to login please update a config file manually!"
return
fi
/usr/bin/docker "$#"
}
alias docker="_docker"

How to run shell script on host from docker container?

How to control host from docker container?
For example, how to execute copied to host bash script?
This answer is just a more detailed version of Bradford Medeiros's solution, which for me as well turned out to be the best answer, so credit goes to him.
In his answer, he explains WHAT to do (named pipes) but not exactly HOW to do it.
I have to admit I didn't know what named pipes were when I read his solution. So I struggled to implement it (while it's actually very simple), but I did succeed.
So the point of my answer is just detailing the commands you need to run in order to get it working, but again, credit goes to him.
PART 1 - Testing the named pipe concept without docker
On the main host, chose the folder where you want to put your named pipe file, for instance /path/to/pipe/ and a pipe name, for instance mypipe, and then run:
mkfifo /path/to/pipe/mypipe
The pipe is created.
Type
ls -l /path/to/pipe/mypipe
And check the access rights start with "p", such as
prw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 mypipe
Now run:
tail -f /path/to/pipe/mypipe
The terminal is now waiting for data to be sent into this pipe
Now open another terminal window.
And then run:
echo "hello world" > /path/to/pipe/mypipe
Check the first terminal (the one with tail -f), it should display "hello world"
PART 2 - Run commands through the pipe
On the host container, instead of running tail -f which just outputs whatever is sent as input, run this command that will execute it as commands:
eval "$(cat /path/to/pipe/mypipe)"
Then, from the other terminal, try running:
echo "ls -l" > /path/to/pipe/mypipe
Go back to the first terminal and you should see the result of the ls -l command.
PART 3 - Make it listen forever
You may have noticed that in the previous part, right after ls -l output is displayed, it stops listening for commands.
Instead of eval "$(cat /path/to/pipe/mypipe)", run:
while true; do eval "$(cat /path/to/pipe/mypipe)"; done
(you can nohup that)
Now you can send unlimited number of commands one after the other, they will all be executed, not just the first one.
PART 4 - Make it work even when reboot happens
The only caveat is if the host has to reboot, the "while" loop will stop working.
To handle reboot, here what I've done:
Put the while true; do eval "$(cat /path/to/pipe/mypipe)"; done in a file called execpipe.sh with #!/bin/bash header
Don't forget to chmod +x it
Add it to crontab by running
crontab -e
And then adding
#reboot /path/to/execpipe.sh
At this point, test it: reboot your server, and when it's back up, echo some commands into the pipe and check if they are executed.
Of course, you aren't able to see the output of commands, so ls -l won't help, but touch somefile will help.
Another option is to modify the script to put the output in a file, such as:
while true; do eval "$(cat /path/to/pipe/mypipe)" &> /somepath/output.txt; done
Now you can run ls -l and the output (both stdout and stderr using &> in bash) should be in output.txt.
PART 5 - Make it work with docker
If you are using both docker compose and dockerfile like I do, here is what I've done:
Let's assume you want to mount the mypipe's parent folder as /hostpipe in your container
Add this:
VOLUME /hostpipe
in your dockerfile in order to create a mount point
Then add this:
volumes:
- /path/to/pipe:/hostpipe
in your docker compose file in order to mount /path/to/pipe as /hostpipe
Restart your docker containers.
PART 6 - Testing
Exec into your docker container:
docker exec -it <container> bash
Go into the mount folder and check you can see the pipe:
cd /hostpipe && ls -l
Now try running a command from within the container:
echo "touch this_file_was_created_on_main_host_from_a_container.txt" > /hostpipe/mypipe
And it should work!
WARNING: If you have an OSX (Mac OS) host and a Linux container, it won't work (explanation here https://stackoverflow.com/a/43474708/10018801 and issue here https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/483 ) because the pipe implementation is not the same, so what you write into the pipe from Linux can be read only by a Linux and what you write into the pipe from Mac OS can be read only by a Mac OS (this sentence might not be very accurate, but just be aware that a cross-platform issue exists).
For instance, when I run my docker setup in DEV from my Mac OS computer, the named pipe as explained above does not work. But in staging and production, I have Linux host and Linux containers, and it works perfectly.
PART 7 - Example from Node.JS container
Here is how I send a command from my Node.JS container to the main host and retrieve the output:
const pipePath = "/hostpipe/mypipe"
const outputPath = "/hostpipe/output.txt"
const commandToRun = "pwd && ls-l"
console.log("delete previous output")
if (fs.existsSync(outputPath)) fs.unlinkSync(outputPath)
console.log("writing to pipe...")
const wstream = fs.createWriteStream(pipePath)
wstream.write(commandToRun)
wstream.close()
console.log("waiting for output.txt...") //there are better ways to do that than setInterval
let timeout = 10000 //stop waiting after 10 seconds (something might be wrong)
const timeoutStart = Date.now()
const myLoop = setInterval(function () {
if (Date.now() - timeoutStart > timeout) {
clearInterval(myLoop);
console.log("timed out")
} else {
//if output.txt exists, read it
if (fs.existsSync(outputPath)) {
clearInterval(myLoop);
const data = fs.readFileSync(outputPath).toString()
if (fs.existsSync(outputPath)) fs.unlinkSync(outputPath) //delete the output file
console.log(data) //log the output of the command
}
}
}, 300);
Use a named pipe.
On the host OS, create a script to loop and read commands, and then you call eval on that.
Have the docker container read to that named pipe.
To be able to access the pipe, you need to mount it via a volume.
This is similar to the SSH mechanism (or a similar socket-based method), but restricts you properly to the host device, which is probably better. Plus you don't have to be passing around authentication information.
My only warning is to be cautious about why you are doing this. It's totally something to do if you want to create a method to self-upgrade with user input or whatever, but you probably don't want to call a command to get some config data, as the proper way would be to pass that in as args/volume into docker. Also, be cautious about the fact that you are evaling, so just give the permission model a thought.
Some of the other answers such as running a script. Under a volume won't work generically since they won't have access to the full system resources, but it might be more appropriate depending on your usage.
The solution I use is to connect to the host over SSH and execute the command like this:
ssh -l ${USERNAME} ${HOSTNAME} "${SCRIPT}"
UPDATE
As this answer keeps getting up votes, I would like to remind (and highly recommend), that the account which is being used to invoke the script should be an account with no permissions at all, but only executing that script as sudo (that can be done from sudoers file).
UPDATE: Named Pipes
The solution I suggested above was only the one I used while I was relatively new to Docker. Now in 2021 take a look on the answers that talk about Named Pipes. This seems to be a better solution.
However, nobody there mentioned anything about security. The script that will evaluate the commands sent through the pipe (the script that calls eval) must actually not use eval for the whole pipe output, but to handle specific cases and call the required commands according to the text sent, otherwise any command that can do anything can be sent through the pipe.
That REALLY depends on what you need that bash script to do!
For example, if the bash script just echoes some output, you could just do
docker run --rm -v $(pwd)/mybashscript.sh:/mybashscript.sh ubuntu bash /mybashscript.sh
Another possibility is that you want the bash script to install some software- say the script to install docker-compose. you could do something like
docker run --rm -v /usr/bin:/usr/bin --privileged -v $(pwd)/mybashscript.sh:/mybashscript.sh ubuntu bash /mybashscript.sh
But at this point you're really getting into having to know intimately what the script is doing to allow the specific permissions it needs on your host from inside the container.
My laziness led me to find the easiest solution that wasn't published as an answer here.
It is based on the great article by luc juggery.
All you need to do in order to gain a full shell to your linux host from within your docker container is:
docker run --privileged --pid=host -it alpine:3.8 \
nsenter -t 1 -m -u -n -i sh
Explanation:
--privileged : grants additional permissions to the container, it allows the container to gain access to the devices of the host (/dev)
--pid=host : allows the containers to use the processes tree of the Docker host (the VM in which the Docker daemon is running)
nsenter utility: allows to run a process in existing namespaces (the building blocks that provide isolation to containers)
nsenter (-t 1 -m -u -n -i sh) allows to run the process sh in the same isolation context as the process with PID 1.
The whole command will then provide an interactive sh shell in the VM
This setup has major security implications and should be used with cautions (if any).
Write a simple server python server listening on a port (say 8080), bind the port -p 8080:8080 with the container, make a HTTP request to localhost:8080 to ask the python server running shell scripts with popen, run a curl or writing code to make a HTTP request curl -d '{"foo":"bar"}' localhost:8080
#!/usr/bin/python
from BaseHTTPServer import BaseHTTPRequestHandler,HTTPServer
import subprocess
import json
PORT_NUMBER = 8080
# This class will handles any incoming request from
# the browser
class myHandler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
def do_POST(self):
content_len = int(self.headers.getheader('content-length'))
post_body = self.rfile.read(content_len)
self.send_response(200)
self.end_headers()
data = json.loads(post_body)
# Use the post data
cmd = "your shell cmd"
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
p_status = p.wait()
(output, err) = p.communicate()
print "Command output : ", output
print "Command exit status/return code : ", p_status
self.wfile.write(cmd + "\n")
return
try:
# Create a web server and define the handler to manage the
# incoming request
server = HTTPServer(('', PORT_NUMBER), myHandler)
print 'Started httpserver on port ' , PORT_NUMBER
# Wait forever for incoming http requests
server.serve_forever()
except KeyboardInterrupt:
print '^C received, shutting down the web server'
server.socket.close()
If you are not worried about security and you're simply looking to start a docker container on the host from within another docker container like the OP, you can share the docker server running on the host with the docker container by sharing it's listen socket.
Please see https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/security/#docker-daemon-attack-surface and see if your personal risk tolerance allows this for this particular application.
You can do this by adding the following volume args to your start command
docker run -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock ...
or by sharing /var/run/docker.sock within your docker compose file like this:
version: '3'
services:
ci:
command: ...
image: ...
volumes:
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
When you run the docker start command within your docker container,
the docker server running on your host will see the request and provision the sibling container.
credit: http://jpetazzo.github.io/2015/09/03/do-not-use-docker-in-docker-for-ci/
As Marcus reminds, docker is basically process isolation. Starting with docker 1.8, you can copy files both ways between the host and the container, see the doc of docker cp
https://docs.docker.com/reference/commandline/cp/
Once a file is copied, you can run it locally
docker run --detach-keys="ctrl-p" -it -v /:/mnt/rootdir --name testing busybox
# chroot /mnt/rootdir
#
I have a simple approach.
Step 1: Mount /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock (So you will be able to execute docker commands inside your container)
Step 2: Execute this below inside your container. The key part here is (--network host as this will execute from host context)
docker run -i --rm --network host -v /opt/test.sh:/test.sh alpine:3.7
sh /test.sh
test.sh should contain the some commands (ifconfig, netstat etc...) whatever you need.
Now you will be able to get host context output.
You can use the pipe concept, but use a file on the host and fswatch to accomplish the goal to execute a script on the host machine from a docker container. Like so (Use at your own risk):
#! /bin/bash
touch .command_pipe
chmod +x .command_pipe
# Use fswatch to execute a command on the host machine and log result
fswatch -o --event Updated .command_pipe | \
xargs -n1 -I "{}" .command_pipe >> .command_pipe_log &
docker run -it --rm \
--name alpine \
-w /home/test \
-v $PWD/.command_pipe:/dev/command_pipe \
alpine:3.7 sh
rm -rf .command_pipe
kill %1
In this example, inside the container send commands to /dev/command_pipe, like so:
/home/test # echo 'docker network create test2.network.com' > /dev/command_pipe
On the host, you can check if the network was created:
$ docker network ls | grep test2
8e029ec83afe test2.network.com bridge local
In my scenario I just ssh login the host (via host ip) within a container and then I can do anything I want to the host machine
I found answers using named pipes awesome. But I was wondering if there is a way to get the output of the executed command.
The solution is to create two named pipes:
mkfifo /path/to/pipe/exec_in
mkfifo /path/to/pipe/exec_out
Then, the solution using a loop, as suggested by #Vincent, would become:
# on the host
while true; do eval "$(cat exec_in)" > exec_out; done
And then on the docker container, we can execute the command and get the output using:
# on the container
echo "ls -l" > /path/to/pipe/exec_in
cat /path/to/pipe/exec_out
If anyone interested, my need was to use a failover IP on the host from the container, I created this simple ruby method:
def fifo_exec(cmd)
exec_in = '/path/to/pipe/exec_in'
exec_out = '/path/to/pipe/exec_out'
%x[ echo #{cmd} > #{exec_in} ]
%x[ cat #{exec_out} ]
end
# example
fifo_exec "curl https://ip4.seeip.org"
Depending on the situation, this could be a helpful resource.
This uses a job queue (Celery) that can be run on the host, commands/data could be passed to this through Redis (or rabbitmq). In the example below, this is occurring in a django application (which is commonly dockerized).
https://www.codingforentrepreneurs.com/blog/celery-redis-django/
To expand on user2915097's response:
The idea of isolation is to be able to restrict what an application/process/container (whatever your angle at this is) can do to the host system very clearly. Hence, being able to copy and execute a file would really break the whole concept.
Yes. But it's sometimes necessary.
No. That's not the case, or Docker is not the right thing to use. What you should do is declare a clear interface for what you want to do (e.g. updating a host config), and write a minimal client/server to do exactly that and nothing more. Generally, however, this doesn't seem to be very desirable. In many cases, you should simply rethink your approach and eradicate that need. Docker came into an existence when basically everything was a service that was reachable using some protocol. I can't think of any proper usecase of a Docker container getting the rights to execute arbitrary stuff on the host.

How to set an environment variable in a running docker container

If I have a docker container that I started a while back, what is the best way to set an environment variable in that running container? I set an environment variable initially when I ran the run command.
$ docker run --name my-wordpress -e VIRTUAL_HOST=domain.example --link my-mysql:mysql -d spencercooley/wordpress
but now that it has been running for a while I want to add another VIRTUAL_HOST to the environment variable. I do not want to delete the container and then just re-run it with the environment variable that I want because then I would have to migrate the old volumes to the new container, it has theme files and uploads in it that I don't want to lose.
I would just like to change the value of VIRTUAL_HOST environment variable.
There are generaly two options, because docker doesn't support this feature now:
Create your own script, which will act like runner for your command. For example:
#!/bin/bash
export VAR1=VAL1
export VAR2=VAL2
your_cmd
Run your command following way:
docker exec -i CONTAINER_ID /bin/bash -c "export VAR1=VAL1 && export VAR2=VAL2 && your_cmd"
Docker doesn't offer this feature.
There is an issue: "How to set an enviroment variable on an existing container? #8838"
Also from "Allow docker start to take environment variables #7561":
Right now Docker can't change the configuration of the container once it's created, and generally this is OK because it's trivial to create a new container.
For a somewhat narrow use case, docker issue 8838 mentions this sort-of-hack:
You just stop docker daemon and change container config in /var/lib/docker/containers/[container-id]/config.json (sic)
This solution updates the environment variables without the need to delete and re-run the container, having to migrate volumes and remembering parameters to run.
However, this requires a restart of the docker daemon. And, until issue issue 2658 is addressed, this includes a restart of all containers.
To:
set up many env. vars in one step,
prevent exposing them in 'sh' history, like with '-e' option (passing credentials/api tokens!),
you can use
--env-file key_value_file.txt
option:
docker run --env-file key_value_file.txt $INSTANCE_ID
Here's how you can modify a running container to update its environment variables. This assumes you're running on Linux. I tested it with Docker 19.03.8
Live Restore
First, ensure that your Docker daemon is set to leave containers running when it's shut down. Edit your /etc/docker/daemon.json, and add "live-restore": true as a top-level key.
sudo vim /etc/docker/daemon.json
My file looks like this:
{
"default-runtime": "nvidia",
"runtimes": {
"nvidia": {
"path": "nvidia-container-runtime",
"runtimeArgs": []
}
},
"live-restore": true
}
Taken from here.
Get the Container ID
Save the ID of the container you want to edit for easier access to the files.
export CONTAINER_ID=`docker inspect --format="{{.Id}}" <YOUR CONTAINER NAME>`
Edit Container Configuration
Edit the configuration file, go to the "Env" section, and add your key.
sudo vim /var/lib/docker/containers/$CONTAINER_ID/config.v2.json
My file looks like this:
...,"Env":["TEST=1",...
Stop and Start Docker
I found that restarting Docker didn't work, I had to stop and then start Docker with two separate commands.
sudo systemctl stop docker
sudo systemctl start docker
Because of live-restore, your containers should stay up.
Verify That It Worked
docker exec <YOUR CONTAINER NAME> bash -c 'echo $TEST'
Single quotes are important here.
You can also verify that the uptime of your container hasn't changed:
docker ps
You wrote that you do not want to migrate the old volumes. So I assume either the Dockerfile that you used to build the spencercooley/wordpress image has VOLUMEs defined or you specified them on command line with the -v switch.
You could simply start a new container which imports the volumes from the old one with the --volumes-from switch like:
$ docker run --name my-new-wordpress --volumes-from my-wordpress -e VIRTUAL_HOST=domain.com --link my-mysql:mysql -d spencercooley/wordpres
So you will have a fresh container but you do not loose the old data. You do not even need to touch or migrate it.
A well-done container is always stateless. That means its process is supposed to add or modify only files on defined volumes. That can be verified with a simple docker diff <containerId> after the container ran a while.
In that case it is not dangerous when you re-create the container with the same parameters (in your case slightly modified ones). Assuming you create it from exactly the same image from which the old one was created and you re-use the same volumes with the above mentioned switch.
After the new container has started successfully and you verified that everything runs correctly you can delete the old wordpress container. The old volumes are then referred from the new container and will not be deleted.
If you are running the container as a service using docker swarm, you can do:
docker service update --env-add <you environment variable> <service_name>
Also remove using --env-rm
To make sure it's addedd as you wanted, just run:
docker exec -it <container id> env
1. Enter your running container:
sudo docker exec -it <container_name> /bin/bash
2. Run command to all available to user accessing the container and copy them to user running session that needs to run the commands:
printenv | grep -v "no_proxy" >> /etc/environment
3. Stop and Start the container
sudo docker stop <container_name>
sudo docker start <container_name>
Firstly you can set env inside the container the same way as you do on a linux box.
Secondly, you can do it by modifying the config file of your docker container (/var/lib/docker/containers/xxxx/config.v2.json). Note you need restart docker service to take affect. This way you can change some other things like port mapping etc.
here is how to update a docker container config permanently
stop container: docker stop <container name>
edit container config: docker run -it -v /var/lib/docker:/var/lib/docker alpine vi $(docker inspect --format='/var/lib/docker/containers/{{.Id}}/config.v2.json' <container name>)
restart docker
I solve this problem with docker commit after some modifications in the base container, we only need to tag the new image and start that one
docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/commit
docker commit [container-id] [tag]
docker commit b0e71de98cb9 stack-overflow:0.0.1
then you can pass environment vars or file
docker run --env AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID --env AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY --env AWS_SESSION_TOKEN --env-file env.local -p 8093:8093 stack-overflow:0.0.1
the quick working hack would be:
get into the running container.
docker exec -it <container_name> bash
set env variable,
install vim if not installed in the container
apt-get install vim
vi ~/.profile at the end of the file add export MAPPING_FILENAME=p_07302021
source ~/.profile
check whether it has been set! echo $MAPPING_FILENAME(make sure you should come out of the container.)
Now, you can run whatever you're running outside of the container from inside the container.
Note, in case you're worried that you might lose your work if the current session you logged in gets logged off. you can always use screen even before starting step 1. That way if you logged off by chance of your inside running container session, you can log back in.
After understand that docker run an image constructed with a dockerfile , and the only way to change it is build another image stop everything and run everything again .
So the easy way to "set an environment variable in a running docker container" is read dockerfile [1] (with docker inspect) understand how docker starts [1].
In the example [1] we can see that docker start with /usr/local/bin/docker-php-entrypoint and we could edit it with vi and add one line with export myvar=myvalue since /usr/local/bin/docker-php-entrypoint Posix script .
If you can change dockerfile, you can add a call to a script [2] for example /usr/local/bin/mystart.sh and in that file we can set your environment var.
Of course after change the scripts you need restart the container [3]
[1]
$ docker inspect 011aa33ba92b
[{
. . .
"ContainerConfig": {
"Cmd": [
"php-fpm"
],
"WorkingDir": "/app",
"Entrypoint": [
"docker-php-entrypoint"
],
. . .
}]
[2]
/usr/local/bin/mystart.sh
#!/bin/bash
export VAR1=VAL1
export VAR2=VAL2
your_cmd
[3]
docker restart dev-php (container name)
Hack with editing docker inner configs and then restarting docker daemon was unsuitable for my case.
There is a way to recreate container with new environment settings and use it for some time.
1. Create new image from runnning container:
docker commit my-service
a1b2c3d4e5f6032165497
Docker created new image, and answered with its id. Note, the image doesn't include mounts and networks.
2. Stop and rename original container:
docker stop my-service
docker rename my-service my-service-original
3. Create and start new container with modified environment:
docker run \
-it --rm \
--name my-service \
--network=required-network \
--mount type=bind,source=/host/path,target=/inside/path,readonly \
--env 'MY_NEW_ENV_VAR=blablabla OLD_ENV=zzz' \
a1b2c3d4e5f6032165497
Here, I did the following:
created new temporary container from image built on step 1, that will show its output on terminal, will exit on Ctrl+C, and will be deleted after that
configured its mounts and networks
added my custom environment configuration
4. After you worked with temporary container, press Ctrl+C to stop and remove it, and then return old container back:
docker rename my-service-original my-service
docker start my-service
How to set environment variable in a running docker container as a development environment
Basically you can do like in normal linux, adding export MY_VAR="value" to ~/.bashrc file.
Instructions
Using VScode attach to your running container
Then with VScode open the ~/.bashrc file
Export your variable by adding the code in the end of the file
export MY_VAR="value"
Finally execute .bashrc using source command
source ~/.bashrc
You could set an environment variable to a running Docker container by
docker exec -it -e "your environment Key"="your new value" <container> /bin/bash
Verify it using below command
printenv
This will update your key with the new value provided.
Note: This will get reverted back to old on if docker gets restarted.
Use export VAR=Value
Then type printenv in terminal to validate it is set correctly.

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