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Basic Docker Cheat Sheet
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A couple of years ago, I was hearing a lot of positive stuff around Linux containers and specifically about the Docker engine.

Recently, I had the opportunity to play around with some Docker containers and I must say that it is a quite useful tool.

Numerous resources exist in the web that discusses the benefits around Docker and containers in general as well as the technical details of its inner workings.

In this post, I am going to summarize the main tasks that I usually perform with the docker engine but before we proceed, I wanted to point out the two aspects I like the most about it:

Searching for an image

docker search "<SEARCH_TERMS>"

  • This will search the docker hub for images relevant to the search terms.

Creating a container in attached mode

docker run -i -t <IMAGE_NAME> <SHELL_COMMAND>

  • SHELL_COMMAND is usually an actual shell environment such as /bin/bash or /bin/sh.

Creating a container in daemon mode

docker run -name <CONTAINER_NAME> -d -p <HOST_PORT>:<CONTAINER_PORT> <IMAGE_NAME> <COMMAND>

  • It can be convenient to set a CONTAINER_NAME to refer to it easily.
  • -p allows to map a host tcp/udp port to a containers port.
  • COMMAND usually starts a server for example: mongod

Listing containers

docker ps -a

  • -a allows to list stopped containers along with running containers

starting and stopping containers

docker start <CONTAINER_NAME | CONTAINER_HASH_ID>

  • starts the container identified by its name or its hash id

docker stop <CONTAINER_NAME | CONTAINER_HASH_ID>

  • stops the specified container

attaching the console to a running container

docker attach <CONTAINER_NAME | CONTAINER_HASH_ID>

  • attach the current console to the specified container

docker exec <CONTAINER_NAME | CONTAINER_HASH_ID> <COMMAND>

  • executes COMMAND inside the specified container, this can be useful if attaching to the container will bring a console with the output of the main service running in the container

detaching the console from a running container without stopping it

Ctrl+P+Q

  • use this combination in a console attached to a container via docker attach.

removing and renamin

docker rm <CONTAINER_NAME | CONTAINER_HASH_ID>

  • removes the specified container

docker rename <CONTAINER_NAME | CONTAINER_HASH_ID> <NEW_NAME>

  • renames the specified container