This is a small post on how to start an exited docker container. If you are in IT space for a couple of years, you will know how Docker disrupted IT. Docker just changed many things and simplified many people’s work. In this post, we will see how to start an exited docker container.
If you are working on Docker containers, you may see some of your containers are excited. If you want to know how to start them, then this post is for you.
List all exited docker containers
Docker provide’s docker subcommands, one of that is ps. The ps command will show running containers(processes). To see only containers which are exited(killed) use below command.
docker ps -f "status=exited"
Output:
[5666] sanne@Surendras-MacBook-Pro:~ > docker ps -f "status=exited" CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 6ac657c2e560 f6f26c66be5e "/bin/bash" 6 days ago Exited (0) 2 days ago friendly_minsky 761978f8ed0f f6f26c66be5e "/bin/bash" 7 days ago Exited (127) 7 days ago youthful_noether 304eb369fb17 linuxnix/buildimage:latest "/usr/sbin/apache2..." 3 weeks ago Exited (0) 7 days ago upbeat_hugle
To list all the running/exited containers we can just use below command.
docker ps -a
We have two methods to bring a container to running state.
Method 1: Start and attache exited docker container
Once you get your container ID from the above command list, you can use whatever container ID you want to start with the following command.
docker start <container_ID>
Example: I want to start “6ac657c2e560″, use below command for that.
[5667] sanne@Surendras-MacBook-Pro:~ > docker start 6ac657c2e560 6ac657c2e560 [5668] sanne@Surendras-MacBook-Pro:~ > docker ps CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 6ac657c2e560 f6f26c66be5e "/bin/bash" 6 days ago Up 2 seconds 80/tcp friendly_minsky
If you want to attach to this started container, you can execute attach command.
Note: If you are new to docker don’t be worried if you don’t see prompt when you connect a container. That depends on what app you containerized. In this above example, we containerized bash shell that way you get prompt when you attach to it.
docker attach <container_ID>
Example:
[5668] sanne@Surendras-MacBook-Pro:~ > docker ps CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 6ac657c2e560 f6f26c66be5e "/bin/bash" 6 days ago Up 2 seconds 80/tcp friendly_minsky [5669] sanne@Surendras-MacBook-Pro:~ > docker attach 6ac657c2e560 root@6ac657c2e560:/# root@6ac657c2e560:/# hostname 6ac657c2e560
Method2: Start exited container with docker start command
Sometimes the above process will not work. The best bet is to start an exited container and attach with a single command.
docker start -a <container_id>
Example:
[5670] sanne@Surendras-MacBook-Pro:~ > docker ps -f "status=exited" CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES 6ac657c2e560 f6f26c66be5e "/bin/bash" 6 days ago Exited (130) 6 seconds ago friendly_minsky 761978f8ed0f f6f26c66be5e "/bin/bash" 7 days ago Exited (127) 7 days ago youthful_noether 304eb369fb17 linuxnix/buildimage:latest "/usr/sbin/apache2..." 3 weeks ago Exited (0) 7 days ago upbeat_hugle [5675] sanne@Surendras-MacBook-Pro:~ > docker start -a 6ac657c2e560 root@6ac657c2e560:/#
In our next post we will see Docker command examples:
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