Docker Cheat Sheet

Want to improve this cheat sheet? See the Contributing section!

¶Why Docker

"With Docker, developers can build any app in any language using any toolchain. “Dockerized” apps are completely portable and can run anywhere - colleagues’ OS X and Windows laptops, QA servers running Ubuntu in the cloud, and production data center VMs running Red Hat.

Developers can get going quickly by starting with one of the 13,000+ apps available on Docker Hub. Docker manages and tracks changes and dependencies, making it easier for sysadmins to understand how the apps that developers build work. And with Docker Hub, developers can automate their build pipeline and share artifacts with collaborators through public or private repositories.

Docker helps developers build and ship higher-quality applications, faster." – What is Docker

¶Prerequisites

I use Oh My Zsh with the Docker plugin for autocompletion of docker commands. YMMV.

¶Linux

The 3.10.x kernel is the minimum requirement for Docker.

¶MacOS

10.8 “Mountain Lion” or newer is required.

¶Windows 10

Hyper-V must be enabled in BIOS

VT-D must also be enabled if available (Intel Processors).

¶Windows Server

Windows Server 2016 is the minimum version required to install docker and docker-compose. Limitations exist on this version, such as multiple virtual networks and Linux containers. Windows Server 2019 and later are recommended.

¶Best Practices

This is where general Docker best practices and war stories go:

The Rabbit Hole of Using Docker in Automated Tests
Bridget Kromhout has a useful blog post on running Docker in production at Dramafever.
There’s also a best practices blog post from Lyst.
Building a Development Environment With Docker
Discourse in a Docker Container

¶Tips

Sources:

¶Prune

The new Data Management Commands have landed as of Docker 1.13:

docker system prune
docker volume prune
docker network prune
docker container prune
docker image prune

¶df

docker system df presents a summary of the space currently used by different docker objects.

¶Heredoc Docker Container

docker build -t htop - << EOF
FROM alpine
RUN apk --no-cache add htop
EOF

¶Last IDs

alias dl='docker ps -l -q'
docker run ubuntu echo hello world
docker commit $(dl) helloworld

¶Commit with command (needs Dockerfile)

docker commit -run='{"Cmd":["postgres", "-too -many -opts"]}' $(dl) postgres

¶Get IP address

docker inspect $(dl) | grep -wm1 IPAddress | cut -d '"' -f 4

Or with jq installed:

docker inspect $(dl) | jq -r '.[0].NetworkSettings.IPAddress'

Or using a go template:

docker inspect -f '{{ .NetworkSettings.IPAddress }}' <container_name>

Or when building an image from Dockerfile, when you want to pass in a build argument:

DOCKER_HOST_IP=`ifconfig | grep -E "([0-9]{1,3}\.){3}[0-9]{1,3}" | grep -v 127.0.0.1 | awk '{ print $2 }' | cut -f2 -d: | head -n1`
echo DOCKER_HOST_IP = $DOCKER_HOST_IP
docker build \
  --build-arg ARTIFACTORY_ADDRESS=$DOCKER_HOST_IP 
  -t sometag \
  some-directory/

¶Get port mapping

docker inspect -f '{{range $p, $conf := .NetworkSettings.Ports}} {{$p}} -> {{(index $conf 0).HostPort}} {{end}}' <containername>

¶Find containers by regular expression

for i in $(docker ps -a | grep "REGEXP_PATTERN" | cut -f1 -d" "); do echo $i; done

¶Get Environment Settings

docker run --rm ubuntu env

¶Kill running containers

docker kill $(docker ps -q)

¶Delete all containers (force!! running or stopped containers)

docker rm -f $(docker ps -qa)

¶Delete old containers

docker ps -a | grep 'weeks ago' | awk '{print $1}' | xargs docker rm

¶Delete stopped containers

docker rm -v $(docker ps -a -q -f status=exited)

¶Delete containers after stopping

docker stop $(docker ps -aq) && docker rm -v $(docker ps -aq)

¶Delete dangling images

docker rmi $(docker images -q -f dangling=true)

¶Delete all images

docker rmi $(docker images -q)

¶Delete dangling volumes

As of Docker 1.9:

docker volume rm $(docker volume ls -q -f dangling=true)

In 1.9.0, the filter dangling=false does not work - it is ignored and will list all volumes.

¶Show image dependencies

docker images -viz | dot -Tpng -o docker.png

¶Slimming down Docker containers

Cleaning APT in a RUN layer - This should be done in the same layer as other apt commands. Otherwise, the previous layers still persist the original information and your images will still be fat.
RUN {apt commands} \
&& apt-get clean \
&& rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* /tmp/* /var/tmp/*

Flatten an image

ID=$(docker run -d image-name /bin/bash)
docker export $ID | docker import – flat-image-name

For backup

ID=$(docker run -d image-name /bin/bash)
(docker export $ID | gzip -c > image.tgz)
gzip -dc image.tgz | docker import - flat-image-name

¶Monitor system resource utilization for running containers

To check the CPU, memory, and network I/O usage of a single container, you can use:

docker stats <container>

For all containers listed by ID:

docker stats $(docker ps -q)

For all containers listed by name:

docker stats $(docker ps --format '{{.Names}}')

For all containers listed by image:

docker ps -a -f ancestor=ubuntu

Remove all untagged images:

docker rmi $(docker images | grep “^” | awk '{split($0,a," "); print a[3]}')

Remove container by a regular expression:

docker ps -a | grep wildfly | awk '{print $1}' | xargs docker rm -f

Remove all exited containers:

docker rm -f $(docker ps -a | grep Exit | awk '{ print $1 }')

¶Volumes can be files

Be aware that you can mount files as volumes. For example you can inject a configuration file like this:

# copy file from container
docker run --rm httpd cat /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf > httpd.conf

# edit file
vim httpd.conf

# start container with modified configuration
docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD/httpd.conf:/usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf:ro" -p "80:80" httpd