Some useful information

Docker cli

docker exec -it <container_name> /bin/bash

# List active containers
docker ps
# ou
docker container ls

# List active containers and also stopped containers
docker ps -a
# Or
docker container ls -a

# list images
docker images

docker image rm <image_id>

# force remove a docker image even if this image is used by a stopped container => -f option to force
docker image rm -f <image_id>

# build an image from a dockerfile named Dockerfile in the current directory. The image is tagged as hello:v0.1
docker image build -t hello:v0.1 .
# The equivalent with the dockerfile name
docker image build -f Dockerfile hello:v0.1 .
# Same without using cache
docker image build --no-cache -t hello:v0.1 .--no-cache


# Inspect an image
docker inspect <image_id>

# Create an image of our container
# but the best way to create an image is a dockerfile, 
# dockerfile permits source versioning and also is an easy way to modify an image
docker container commit <container_id>
# Tag the image
docker tag image <image_id> <our_tag>

# Warning: delete all stopped containers + all networks not used by at least one container + all dangling images + all build cache
docker system prune --volumes --all
# By default, volumes are not removed to prevent important data from being deleted if there is currently no container using the volume.
# Use the --volumesflag when running the command to prune volumes as well 

# Remove all stopped containers + all networks not used by at least one container + all volumes not used by at least one container + all images without at least one container associated to them + all build cache
docker system prune --all --force --volumes

Dockerfile

ENTRYPOINT

The entry point defines the executable which is used to exectute the commands give with the COMMAND directive.

Default ENTRYPOINT is /bin/sh -c

ENTRYPOINT is optional

ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/bin/java"]
CMD ["-version"]

# ==> will result into /usr/bin/java -version (which is useless, it's just an example)
# juste /bin/bash instead of default /bin/sh
ENTRYPOINT ["/bin/bash", "-c"]

CMD

CMD can be interpreted as CMD [“executable”, “param1”, “param2”]

Only one CMD by dockerfile, it defines the default “command” to execute when starting a container.

# Then you can't have this =>
CMD ["echo 'coucou';echo 'coucou2'", "/usr/bin/sshd"]

There it will be interpreted as /bin/sh -c echo ‘coucou’;echo ‘coucou2’ /usr/bin/sshd… ==> ERROR

To do this kind of things:

CMD ["/bin/sh", "-c", "echo 'coucou';echo 'coucou2';/usr/bin/sshd"]

IMPORTANT: if the docker container runs with a command argument (passed from cli or from docker-compose.yml) then CMD will be ignored

Enable systemd inside your container

It can be interesting to install and enable systemd in some cases, for instance when you wan to create a test environment to mimic real servers.

# installation et preparation de systemd
RUN yum -y install systemd; yum clean all; \
(cd /lib/systemd/system/sysinit.target.wants/; for i in *; do [ $i == systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service ] || rm -f $i; done); \
rm -f /lib/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/*;\
rm -f /etc/systemd/system/*.wants/*;\
rm -f /lib/systemd/system/local-fs.target.wants/*; \
rm -f /lib/systemd/system/sockets.target.wants/*udev*; \
rm -f /lib/systemd/system/sockets.target.wants/*initctl*; \
rm -f /lib/systemd/system/basic.target.wants/*;\
rm -f /lib/systemd/system/anaconda.target.wants/*;

# Put this line at the end of the Dockerfile
# Init systemd
CMD ["/usr/sbin/init"]

You can then use systemctl.

If you have also installed and enabled sshd in some cases you can get the error System is booting up. See pam_nologin(8). As explained in this link you can overcome this error by removing the following file:

rm -f /var/run/nologin
# sometimes need to remove /run/nologin

Docker compose

docker-compose up
docker-compose kill # ⇒ send SIGKILL
docker-compose stop # ⇒ only stop containers but don’t remove them
docker-compose down

# For a clean start:
docker-compose rm -f
docker-compose up --force-recreate
docker-compose up --build --force-recreate

docker-compose.yml

command: /data/dockerscripts/startup.sh
# equivalent to CMD [ "/data/dockerscripts/startup.sh" ]   BUT CAREFUL it will replace the CMD of your container (CMD from the dockerfile used to build the image of the container)