This article covers list of commands that you should know to manage docker containers in your local machine or server. some of the important commands are docker list containers, start a container and stop container from docker.
Docker container is an isolated packages of software that you can use to run your application, code or any infrastructure. basically, it helps to manage your application code without conflicting with your current machine/server setup.
There are few commands that you need to know to manage docker container. let's start with basic commands.
To start/stop a docker container, you can do that using the command,
1docker container start [OPTIONS] <Container id>
Note: you can specify the name or you can just specify the first two digits of the container id.
To stop the container, you need to specify the stop
in the docker container command.
1docker container stop [OPTIONS] <Container id>
To stop all the running container, you can use the command,
1docker stop $(docker ps -a -q)
Once you stop all containers, you can remove it using the command,
1docker container prune
To list all the docker container, you can do that using the command,
1docker container ls [OPTIONS]
you can add options such as
--all or -a
it shows all the containers in the docker--size or -s
, displays the container along with size--latest or -l
shows latest container first--last or -n
it shows the lastly created containersTo kill a docker container, you can use the command
1docker container kill [OPTIONS] <Container ID>
there is a difference between docker stop
and docker kill
container commands. docker stop
will send a signal SIGTERM
and then after some grace period it sends the signal SIGKILL
to stop the containers whereas in docker kill
command, it sends the SIGKILL
command directly.
you need to be careful with docker kill
command, my personal suggestion would be to use docker stop
command. to explain it a simple way, difference is like shutting down your computer vs forcefully removing the plug from socket to turn off the machine.
So far, we have seen the important command that you need to know for docker containers. try to use the above commands and play with it to get hands-on experience. if you feel like any important commands are missing, let me know in the comments below. Happy Coding 🙂
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