Docker CLI Cheat Sheet
Table of content:
List running and stopped containers
See all running containers (includes port information, id and name)
docker ps
See all containers including stopped containers
docker ps -a
Docker images
List all images on your machine
docker images
Remove an image with the container ID of e9dc2cdd84f9
docker image rm e9dc2cdd84f9
Get a shell on a running container
Get the name or ID of the container you wish to get a shell session by running docker ps
# docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
5c229f1c57d8 nginx:nginx "/docker-entrypoint.…" 8 seconds ago Up 3 seconds 0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, :::80->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:443->443/tcp, :::443->443/tcp Nginx
Run the execute command with the CONTINAER ID and the -it interactive flag.
docker exec -it 5c229f1c57d8 bash
Or you can use the NAME of the container
docker exec -it Nginx bash
You can log in as root by specifying the user
docker exec -it --user root 5c229f1c57d8 bash
If you get this error CI runtime exec failed: exec failed: unable to start container process: exec: "bash": executable file not found in $PATH: unknown then it means that bash is not installed on the container. Common docker container images such as alpine does not come with bash. You can use sh instead
docker exec -it --user root 5c229f1c57d8 sh
Docker Compose
Building
Build your project
docker compose build
Build your project without using any local cache
docker compose build --no-cache
Starting and stopping containers
Start your project in the foreground
docker compose start
Stop docker compose containers running in the foregoround
docker compose stop
Start the project and follow all the containers logs in your terminal
docker compose up
Another way to stop all your compose containers running
docker compose down
Freeing up disk space from Docker
Remove dangling images (untagged images that display <none> for the name)
docker image prune
Remove dangling images and unused images (not assigned or used in a container)
docker image prune -a
Remove all stopped containers, dangling images, networks and build cache
docker system prune
Remove all stopped containers, dangling images, networks and build cache and unused images
docker system prune -a