Docker Commands

Here’s a list of commands to remember for docker administration.

List Containers

To list all docker containers on a host:

sudo docker ps -a

Remove Containers

To remove all docker containers on a host:

sudo docker rm -f $(sudo docker ps -aq)

Container Logs

To see the logs for a container:

sudo docker logs containername

Container Stats

To get the stats of docker containers, as a single snapshot:

docker stats --no-stream

Additional commands are here: How To Remove Docker Images, Containers, and Volumes | DigitalOcean

Copy Files from Container

To copy files out of a docker container, do this:

sudo docker cp <imageid>:/pathincontainer ~/pathonhost

Running a Terminal Container

Sometimes, it’s necessary to spin up a blank docker container for testing network or other facilities from a terminal session in the container.

Here’s a quick command that will spin up a container with an ubuntu bash terminal.

NOTE: It also adds an /etc/hosts entry of (host.docker.internal) which is the docker entry for accessing the container’s host machine.

This is useful if you are testing visibility of any host services from the container.

docker run --rm -it --add-host host.docker.internal:host-gateway --entrypoint bash ubuntu

Once started and at the terminal, you can install network utilities such as ping, curl, etc with this:

apt-get update; apt-get install curl; apt-get install inetutils-ping; apt-get install net-tools

Get Docker Gateway Address

Here’s a pair of commands to get the docker’s bridge network gateway address and subnet:

docker network inspect bridge --format='{{(index .IPAM.Config 0).Gateway}}'

docker network inspect bridge --format='{{(index .IPAM.Config 0).Subnet}}'