Step 6 — Managing Docker Containers

After using Docker for a while, you’ll have many active (running) and inactive containers on your computer. To view the active ones, use:

docker ps

You will see output similar to the following:

Output

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED

In this tutorial, you started two containers; one from the hello-world image and another from the ubuntu image. Both containers are no longer running, but they still exist on your system.

To view all containers — active and inactive, run docker ps with the -a switch:

docker ps -a

You’ll see output similar to this:

Output

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE         COMMAND   CREATED         STATUS                     PORTS     NAMES
1c08a7a0d0e4   ubuntu        "bash"     About a minute ago   Exited (0) 7 seconds ago             dazzling_taussig
587000e49d53   hello-world   "/hello"   5 minutes ago        Exited (0) 5 minutes ago             adoring_kowalevski

To view the latest container you created, pass it the -l switch:

docker ps -l

Output

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE     COMMAND   CREATED         STATUS                     PORTS     NAMES
1c08a7a0d0e4   ubuntu    "bash"    3 minutes ago   Exited (0) 2 minutes ago             dazzling_taussig

To start a stopped container, use docker start, followed by the container ID or the container’s name. Let’s start the Ubuntu-based container with the ID of 1c08a7a0d0e4:

`docker start 1c08a7a0d0e4

The container will start, and you can use docker ps to see its status:

Output

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE     COMMAND   CREATED         STATUS         PORTS     NAMES
1c08a7a0d0e4   ubuntu    "bash"    6 minutes ago   Up 8 seconds             dazzling_taussig

To stop a running container, use docker stop, followed by the container ID or name. This time, we’ll use the name that Docker assigned the container, which is dazzling_taussig:

`docker stop dazzling_taussig

Once you’ve decided you no longer need a container anymore, remove it with the docker rm command, again using either the container ID or the name. Use the docker ps -a command to find the container ID or name for the container associated with the hello-world image and remove it.

`docker rm adoring_kowalevski

You can start a new container and give it a name using the --name switch. You can also use the --rm switch to create a container that removes itself when it’s stopped. See the docker run help command for more information on these options and others.

Containers can be turned into images which you can use to build new containers. Let’s look at how that works.

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Last update: 2023-05-19
Created: 2023-05-19