Joshua's Docs - Docker Cheatsheet, notes, and more
Light

Resources

What & Link Type
Docs: Base Commands - Quick Ref CLI Reference
Docs: Compose - getting started Tutorial
Compose Guide (Heroku) Guide
FreeCodeCamp: Practical Introduction to Docker Compose Tutorial
Fireship: Docker in 100 Seconds YouTube Video
Just Enough Docker Cheatsheet / Quick Guide

Docker CLI - Basic Commands

What Command Helpful Flags
Build an image docker build {path}
{path} is
--tag / -t Specify image name (+ optional tag). Format is name:tag, but :tag is optional.
     - Example: -t joshua/custom-image:3.2
     - You can use -t multiple times, for multiple tags
--build-arg Specify environment variable values only for build-time.
List active containers docker ps --all
Restart a container docker restart {containerName}
Stop a container docker kill {containerName}
Inspect something docker inspect {thingIdOrName}
View logs docker logs {?:containerName} -f follow
-tail
--details show extra detail
Execute a command inside a container docker exec {containerName} -i interactive
-t allocate TTY
-d detach
Create volume docker volume create {options} {volumeName} --driver (see notes on volume types)
--label
--name
--opt
Copy file(s) into container docker cp {srcPath} {containerName}:{containerPath}
List volumes docker volume ls
Drop volume docker volume rm {volumeName} -f or --force
Print version docker version
List images docker image ls
Pull an image docker pull {imageRef}
Run an image docker run {imageRef}

Example: docker run hello-world
--name (give container a short name)
Run an image temporarily, with a shell docker run -rm -it {imageRef} /bin/bash
List downloaded images docker images OR docker image ls --filter

Note: For most of the commands that take an image name, you can optionally request a specific tag or digest version of an image by using a special suffix. For example, {imageName}:{tag} or {imageName}@sha256:{digestSha}

docker-compose is listed below, in its own section

Docker Compose (aka docker-compose)

Docker Compose - Commands

There is an online official compose command overview, or use docker-compose --help

Many of these commands are in common with compose-less environments, just using docker instead of docker-compose

There are common flags that can be applied with any subcommand. For example:

-f or --file lets you specify a docker .yml file other than the default of docker-compose.yml.

If using -f / --file, it should come before the command, like docker-compose -f ./my-compose-file.yml up -d

What Command Helpful Flags
Test out a config docker-compose config
Stop containers, without removing docker-compose stop
Stop and remove containers docker-compose down -v: remove named volumes
Launch container docker-compose up -d (starts in detached mode)
--force-recreate
--build
Build an image for a service docker-compose build {optArgs} {optServiceName} --no-cache
Start a specific service, and run a specific command against it docker-compose run {serviceName} {OPT_command} {OPT_args}
Removed stopped containers docker-compose rm If you don't pass a name, it removes all (like rm *)
-v removes the volumes as well. Useful if something is persisting when you don't want it to and need a hard reset.
-f : Force
Validate a config without running it docker-compose config -q - Quiet mode, only validates true/false without verbose output
Show logs docker-compose logs -f follow
--tail={#} Tail lines
You can also pass the container name - docker-compose logs {containerName}
Run a command inside the container docker-compose exec -it {serviceName} {command} -it (interactive, tty)

Docker-Compose File syntax and options

Docker-Compose: Extending Configurations via the CLI

Let's say that you have an existing docker-compose config file, like docker-compose.yml, but you want to change some of the settings without actually modifying the file (maybe you can't?).

One option is to create another config file (B) that extends the original (A), and run them together, with docker-compose -f ${PATH_TO_FILE_A} -f ${PATH_TO_FILE_B} ${REST_OF_CMD}

  • Example: docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up webapp

Docker-Compose: Random Tips and Notes

  • You can use environment values within your docker-compose file (variable substitution)
    • Syntax is ${VARIABLE_NAME} (just like JS template literal), or $VARIABLE_NAME
    • The .env file has to be in the same directory as the docker-compose.yml file (see 1, 2)
      • Depending on your version of docker-compose, you might be able to get around this with either --project-directory (ref) or --env-file (ref), however, I have not had success with either so far
  • You can pass environment values to the container itself
    • WARNING: These have to be passed explicitly - Docker will not just pass all values through
    • Full details
    • You can use the env_file option to pass an entire .env file contents to the container
      • Put under environment: but leave off value
      • Pass via docker-compose run -e {VAR}={VAL} {imageName}
  • You can use comments (prefix with #, like shell scripts)
  • Specifying ports in YAML:
    • Compose syntax is host_port:container_port
      • Example: 3000:80 would mean that you would go to localhost:3000 on your computer (host) to access a web app that is serving on 80 within the container
    • If both host and container are using the same port, you still have to specify both
      • This is because a ports value of 80 does not convert to 80:80 - instead it turns into {RANDOM_port}:80
  • You can start an individual service within a compose file with docker-compose up {SERVICE}

Dockerfile

Dockerfile syntax and options

📄 Cheatsheet: Dockerfile Syntax Cheatsheet

💡 Doc: Best Practices

Docker Entrypoints, Services, init, and Process Management

An often glossed-over part of crafting a Docker image is how you are responsible for orchestrating the services and processes that you spin up as part of the main entrypoint (often referred to as ). When a Docker image does a singular thing after start up, this doesn't present much of a challenge, but when a container needs to run multiple services, it can get complicated (especially if there are zombie processes).

Docs: Multi Service Containers

Rather than writing a complicated shell script to orchestrate all your services, it is often worth exploring the use of a service orchestration tool, like:

💡 If you are looking for a good explanation on why this matters for Docker / what this is all about, this writeup from the maintainer of tini is a great resource

Dockerfile Gotchas and Tips

There are some interesting "gotchas" with Dockerfiles - usually related to order-of-operations and combining or splitting up commands.

  • You never want a command like apt-get update to run as its own command - it should always be combined with an install command to make sure the results are not cached.
  • RUN only accepts a single shell string at a time. However, there are some workarounds, which are really just the same as multi-line shell tricks:
    • Use \ at the end of lines to break up long commands
    • Use the heredoc syntax to run true multi-line command strings:
      RUN <<EOF
      echo "Line 1"
      echo "Line 2"
      EOF
  • CMD vs RUN vs ENTRYPOINT vs docker-compose command
    • RUN can be used to execute a command as part of a Dockerfile / Docker image build process. There are a few caveats / things to note:
      • This doesn't really work for starting services / daemons / processes. Generally, the output of a RUN command should be something tangible that can be cached and is a one-shot process.
    • CMD and command are what gets executed against your entrypoint on the startup of your container. It is one of the most critical components of a Docker configuration
      • If you define command through docker-compose, it will override the Dockerfile / image's CMD value
    • ENTRYPOINT: Unlike CMD, this is not designed to be overridden via the CLI arbitrarily (*); once set in a Dockerfile, it makes the container act more like an executable, where you can use the CMD as arguments to the entrypoint (combining them), but not overriding it.
      • Technically, you can actually override this via CLI, when using docker run --entrypoint
  • Order of operations and cache-invalidation
    • You pretty much always want to order operations that are more likely to frequently change (e.g. copying source code, installing dependencies) later in the Dockerfile than stable commands, so you can reuse the cache layers before them instead of invalidating them

Docker Build and Managing Docker Images

Docker Build vs Builder vs Buildx vs Compose Build

If you come to the Docker docs and look for sections on building, you will find docker build, docker builder, and docker buildx. Plus docker compose build.

In short:

  • docker builder is an alias for the default behavior of docker build
  • buildx (docker buildx) is a more powerful builder that can be used for multi-platform builds

Finally, docker compose build is really just a wrapper around docker build - it runs docker build over the services in your docker-compose.yml file to build the individual image for each service.

Debugging Failed Docker Builds

It used to be that debugging failed Docker builds was easier than it is now, because the build command would export each build layer with a SHA ID you could use to spin up that layer as a container and inspect things (i.e., these steps). You could take the ID of the layer right before the failure, spin it up, and do your debugging.

However, as of August 2023 (time of writing this), this will not work with a modern Docker installation out-of-the-box, as this relies on the older backend for builds, and the new backend, buildkit, does not offer this functionality. You can workaround this by temporarily using the older (non-buildkit) backend for builds (e.g. DOCKER_BUILDKIT=0 docker build ...) (more detailed instructions).

There are also efforts underway to improve the debugging experience with the new buildkit backend (see buildkit issue #1472), as well as third-party tools for this purpose - such as ktock/buildg.

Multi-Stage Builds

https://docs.docker.com/build/building/multi-stage/

Networking

Main resource: Docker - Networking Overview

Ports vs Expose

📄 Helpful StackOverflow: "What is the difference between docker-compose ports vs expose"

In newer versions of docker, EXPOSE doesn't even do anything; its purpose is informational, as a way to explicitly advertise (to readers of the code) that the image (or service) will be working with the port(s) referenced, and other services should be able to talk to it through that port. Expose does not expose them to the host machine.

The reason why this is only informational is that cross-service communication is enabled by Docker out-of-the-box, regardless of whether or not you use expose.

Port settings (e.g. docker-compose {service}.ports or --publish) actually do expose container ports to the host.

The syntax for port settings are host_port:container_port, or just container_port (which uses a random host port)

Volumes

Volume types options / drivers

See: Docs: Docker storage drivers

Type Description
tmpfs Temp data, stored in memory, not persisted between sessions
btrfs Advanced, persisted storage. Requires a bunch of pre-reqs, including Linux Kernel support.
nfs Shared, persisted storage

How do i...

How do I...

  • List active containers
    • docker ps
  • Restart a container with changes after a .yml / yaml config change?
    • Bring up, and force image rebuild:
      • docker-compose up -d --force-recreate --build
      • If you don't need to bring up: docker-compose build --no-cache
      • NOTE: neither of the above options rebuilds volumes, they only rebuild images. You can use --renew-anon-volumes to recreate anonymous volumes, but this won't work for named volumes.
    • If you run into issues (changes don't seem to take affect, passwords not working, etc)...
      • Sometimes the volume data will persist, even if you ran docker-compose down -v first.
      • Try finding the volume data directory and running rm -rf on it, then rebuild and start back up
  • Rebuild volumes?
    • If it is an anonymous volume, you can use --renew-anon-volumes with docker-compose up
    • If it is a named volume:
      • docker-compose down -v
      • Stop container, then run docker volume rm {VOLUME_REF}
    • To remove both a container and its volumes, use docker rm --volumes {containerName}
  • Get a container IP address
    • docker inspect {containerName}
    • Just IP address:
      • docker inspect -f '{{range .NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}' container_name_or_id
      • Use double quotes if you have issues.
      • Credit: S/O
  • Debug a container not starting correctly (die event), or view logs
    • Multiple options for log viewing:
      • See this S/O
        • Summary:
          • Start event logger with docker events& - this kind of does tail
          • Do "thing" - e.g. up, that triggers error
          • You should see error appear in event log
          • Copy error instance ID from event log and use with docker logs {eventId}
      • docker-compose -f {composeFile} logs
        • Use -f to follow
        • Use --tail={#} to tail # of lines
      • docker logs {?:containerName}
  • Access shell inside container
    • Already running container?
      • docker exec -it {containerName} bash (or sh)
        • Use exit to stop
      • You can also try docker attach {containerName} to link console STDIN/STDOUT, but this seems less optimal than exec
    • Stopped container?
      • docker compose run {serviceName} bash (or sh)
        • E.g. docker compose run my-backend bash
      • docker run -it -d {IMAGE_REF} bin/bash
        • If you don't have an image for the container, you can use docker commit {CONTAINER_REF} temporary_image to generate one, then use with the above command
        • Use something like --entrypoint=bash if you need to override the entrypoint
      • Lots of tips in this S/O question thread
  • Remove a stubborn network ("error while removing network ... has active endpoints")
    1. Find out what containers are using the network
      • docker inspect {networkName}
    2. Either bring down those containers, or break the connection
      • To break connection(s), use docker network disconnect {networkName} {containerName}
    3. Once you have broken linkage, you should be able to bring down
      • Either re-run down, or manually remove network with docker network rm {networkName}
  • Kill *all containers
    • docker ps -q | xargs docker kill
  • Find the size of an image before downloading?
    • Use the "Tags" tab on a Docker image listing page, e.g. Alpine
  • Bind / expose a port for an already running container?
  • Run an image, temporarily, and immediately tear down afterwards?
    • docker run --rm

Docker Introspection / Debugging Tools

Inspecting Builds, Failed Image Builds

If you are trying to inspect or debug a Docker image build, there are a few different options (but unfortunately fewer, if you are using the newer buildx engine):

  • buildkit: Inspecting each layer, by hash
    • With the older buildkit engine, it will log each image layer's hash, which you can then use to spin up a container at that exact point
  • buildg (ktock/buildg): An interactive debugger for Docker build. Based on buildkit.
  • buildx: They are working on building debugging tooling into newer versions of buildx - see buildkit Issue #1472 and the buildx proposal / tracker issue #1104

Inspecting Stopped Containers

Docker has limited tooling to support inspecting stopped containers, and many commands assume that a container is running and will error out if it is not. However, there are several options for getting around this.

The first (obvious) answer to how to inspect a stopped container is to start it back up (e.g. with docker start) and then inspect it, but this might not be possible. Perhaps the entry point for the container is something that exits quickly, or errors out when started directly.

If you can't simply use docker start, the next thing to try is overriding the entry point / last cmd entry:

# If the image already exists
docker run -it --rm --entrypoint=/bin/bash {IMAGE_REF}

Inspecting Volumes

docker run -it --rm -v {VOLUME_REF}:{CONTAINER_PATH} busybox sh

# e.g.
docker run -it --rm -v my-volume:/tmp/volume busybox sh

Issues / Troubleshooting

  • Linux / macOS: Commands only work when prefaced with sudo
    • Add your user to the Docker usergroup: sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
      • You must either log out and back in, or use su -s ${USER} to refresh group membership
    • See Docker docs: Linux: Manager Docker as a non-root user
  • exec -t output is missing lines, line endings don't make sense, etc.
    • -t(or -tty) allocates a pseudo tty for output, which by default uses CR instead of LF for line endings. If you are piping the output back to your shell, this can lead to confusing output and errors if you are trying to pipe it back into programs expecting LF.
    • You can use something like tr to replace the line endings, as a quick fix
  • PostgreSQL issues with Windows - usually due to permissions issue
  • Can't remove volume (even with -f or --force): "Error response from daemon: remove {volume}: volume is in use"
    • Try this first:
      • docker-compose down -v (or docker-compose rm -f -v) (WARNING: This will remove all volumes)
    • If the volume is being locked by a container, you can find what is using it:
      • docker ps -a --filter volume={volume} to find container, and then docker rm {CONTAINER} to remove container
    • Try docker system prune, and then remove volumes again
    • As a last ditch effort, you can try restarting the entire Docker service (either via GUI, or CLI), then try removing container
    • Lots of tips in the responses to this S/O question
  • Can't stop or kill a running container (maybe with a message like An HTTP request took too long...)
    • Sometimes Docker just gets in a really strange state. AFAIK, there are a bunch of open issues for this, but the only real fix is to just restart the Docker service entirely. There should even be a menu option to restart Docker Desktop!
    • You could try getting in through a shell (e.g. with docker exec), but that is likely to fail if the container is hosed anyways.
  • Docker keeps pulling from the wrong node_modules, or stale modules, etc.
    • Make sure you aren't actually mounting your local node_modules directory directly, or else you are going to run into version issues
    • If you need to bind-mount the directory that contains node_modules (e.g. /src), then create an anonymous volume for the nested node_modules to prevent it from being bind-mounted to the host
      • You usually want to use an anonymous volume, not* a named volume, or else you are going to run into weird data persistence issues between runs
  • For NodeJS projects, keep getting a unexpected token "export" error
    • Likely issue with node_modules resolution; make sure that dependencies can be found within the container, and try to avoid bind-mounting node_modules
      • Don't use node_modules as a volume name!
    • If node_modules is not bind-mounted and everything is set up correctly, but you are still getting this error, make sure that node_modules is actually up-to-date - if package.json changed, you likely need to rebuild your container image, as it probably has npm install as a step
      • Example reset: docker-compose down -v && docker-compose build && docker-compose up
      • Also, make sure both package.json and package-lock.json are copied to the image before running npm install
Markdown Source Last Updated:
Thu Feb 15 2024 07:31:53 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
Markdown Source Created:
Thu Dec 05 2019 01:06:19 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
© 2024 Joshua Tzucker, Built with Gatsby
Feedback