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Run a Docker image as a container

Asked 9 years, 9 months ago Modified 1 month ago Viewed 1.2m times

727

After building a Docker image from a dockerfile , I see the image was built successfully, but what do I
do with it? Shouldn't i be able to run it as a container?

docker docker‐image

ShareFollow edited Aug 26, 2020 at 8:50 asked Aug 28, 2013 at 20:34
Alonme boom
1,313 14 28 10.7k 9 43 64
12 Answers Sorted by: Highest score ﴾default﴿

1017

The specific way to run it depends on whether you gave the image a tag/name or not.
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REPOSITORY TAG ID CREATED SIZE
ubuntu 12.04 8dbd9e392a96 4 months ago 131.5 MB (virtual
131.5 Accept
MB) all cookies Necessary cookies only

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With a name ﴾let's use Ubuntu﴿:

$ docker run ‐i ‐t ubuntu:12.04 /bin/bash

Without a name, just using the ID:

$ docker run ‐i ‐t 8dbd9e392a96 /bin/bash

Please see Docker run reference for more information.

ShareFollow edited Nov 17, 2019 at 22:37 answered Aug 28, 2013 at 21:14
Peter Mortensen Andy
31k 21 104 131 35.3k 5 43 50

7 So the human‐friendly names printed under 'NAME' in docker ps ‐a is not useful here? – ThorSummoner
Aug 23, 2015 at 4:19

15 docker ps lists containers, not images. If you want to create an image from a container, you must docker
commit . You can use the NAME in the commit ﴾e.g. docker commit _NAME_ _imagename_ ﴿ – Andy Aug 24,
2015 at 18:56

12 @Andy Why do we use /bin/bash at the end ? I am new also – Raheel Jul 7, 2016 at 16:54

8 @RaheelKhan Becaue your docker image needs something to run. You could replace that with a program that
you've installed. /bin/bash is just a handy shell that's already installed. – Ryan Shillington Feb 9, 2017 at 15:11

1 If you need to add an environment variable you can do docker run ‐i ‐t ‐e ROOT_PASSWORD=root
ubuntu:12.04 – Balaji Radhakrishnan Dec 16, 2017 at 14:23
 93

Do the following steps:

1. $ docker images
You will get a list of all local Docker images with the tags specified.

2. $ docker run image_name:tag_name

If you didn't specify tag_name it will automatically run an image with the 'latest' tag.
Instead of image_name , you can also specify an image ID ﴾no tag_name﴿.

ShareFollow edited Nov 17, 2019 at 22:38 answered May 17, 2016 at 7:04
Peter Mortensen kalyani chaudhari
31k 21 104 131 7,475 3 24 21

I'm new to docker, it helps me, Thanks. Further we can check statuses for running images sudo docker ps ‐a
– WK5 Mar 1, 2021 at 11:46

48

To list the Docker images

$ docker images

If your application wants to run in with port 80, and you can expose a different port to bind
locally, say 8080:

$ docker run ‐d ‐‐restart=always ‐p 8080:80 image_name:version

ShareFollow edited Nov 17, 2019 at 22:47 answered Aug 8, 2017 at 5:47
 Peter Mortensen Murali Manchadikkal
31k 21 104 131 887 1 10 7

2 This ‐‐restart=always option should be used always as a rule. – Arefe Nov 9, 2021 at 8:36

32

You can see your available images using:

docker images

Then you can run in detached mode so your terminal is still usable. You have several options to run it
using a repository name ﴾with or without a tag﴿ or image ID:

docker run ‐d repository

docker run ‐d repository:tag
docker run ‐d image_id

Then you can check your container is running using

docker ps

gives you a container ID. You can use it or just the 2/3 first characters to go into your
docker ps
container using:

docker exec ‐it container_id /bin/bash

And you can stop it using docker stop container_id and docker rm container_id .

You can also run your container with ‐‐rm arguments so if you stop your container it will automatically
be removed.

ShareFollow edited Apr 24 at 13:28 answered May 7, 2018 at 6:50

amdev
2,920 3 33 45

2 The ‐‐rm ﴾note: 2 dashes not single﴿ option is gold!!!, my system is littered with stopped ﴾dead﴿ containers.
– Johan Snowgoose Jul 14, 2019 at 21:40
 15

Get the name or id of the image you would like to run, with this command:

docker images

The Docker run command is used in the following way:

docker run [OPTIONS] IMAGE [COMMAND] [ARG...]

Below I have included the dispatch, name, publish, volume and restart options before specifying the
image name or id:

docker run ‐d ‐‐name container‐name ‐p localhost:80:80 ‐v

$HOME/myContainer/configDir:/myImage/configDir ‐‐restart=always image‐name

Where:

‐‐detach , ‐d Run container in background and print container ID

‐‐name Assign a name to the container
‐‐publish , ‐p Publish a container’s port(s) to the host
‐‐volume , ‐v Bind mount a volume
‐‐restart Restart policy to apply when a container exits

For more information, please check out the official Docker run reference.

ShareFollow edited Nov 17, 2019 at 22:51 answered Jun 13, 2018 at 0:12
Peter Mortensen JSON C11
31k 21 104 131 11.1k 7 78 65

11
I had the same problem. I ran my Docker image, and it created a container with a specific
CONTAINER_ID. I wanted to work with the same container:

First run your Docker image:

docker run ‐it ‐p 8888:8888 ‐p 6006:6006 ‐v ~/:/host waleedka/modern‐deep‐learning

Then list all the containers you have made:

sudo docker ps ‐a

And select the container you want to work with ﴾mine is 167ddd6d7f15﴿:

sudo docker start ‐ai 167ddd6d7f15

ShareFollow edited Nov 17, 2019 at 22:52 answered Oct 29, 2018 at 9:08
Peter Mortensen farnaz jazayeri
31k 21 104 131 625 6 7

To view a list of all images on your Docker host, run:

$ docker images
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
apache_snapshot latest 13037686eac3 22 seconds ago 249MB
ubuntu latest 00fd29ccc6f1 3 weeks ago 111MB

Now you can run the Docker image as a container in interactive mode:

$ docker run ‐it apache_snapshot /bin/bash

OR if you don't have any images locally,Search Docker Hub for an image to download:

$ docker search ubuntu

NAME DESCRIPTION STARS OFFICIAL AUTOMATED
ubuntu Ubuntu is a Debian... 6759 [OK]
dorowu/ubuntu‐desktop‐lxde‐vnc Ubuntu with openss... 141 [OK]
rastasheep/ubuntu‐sshd Dockerized SSH ser... 114 [OK]
 rastasheep/ubuntu‐sshd Dockerized SSH ser... 114 [OK]
ansible/ubuntu14.04‐ansible Ubuntu 14.04 LTS w... 88 [OK]
ubuntu‐upstart Upstart is an even... 80 [OK]

Pull the Docker image from a repository with the docker pull command:

$ docker pull ubuntu

Run the Docker image as a container:

$ docker run ‐it ubuntu /bin/bash

ShareFollow answered Feb 14, 2020 at 15:05

Abhishek Patwa
167 2 5

Here is an example to run a webdev service in Docker. The image's name is morrisjobke/webdav. You
can pull it from Docker Hub.

After you run these images, you can then access the WebDAV instance at
http://localhost:8888/webdav . Internally the folder /var/webdav is used as the WebDAV root.

You can run this container in the following way:

$ docker run ‐d ‐e USERNAME=test ‐e PASSWORD=test ‐p 8888:80 morrisjobke/webdav

ShareFollow edited Nov 17, 2019 at 22:43 answered Mar 3, 2017 at 5:58
Peter Mortensen Yang Yu
31k 21 104 131 302 3 8

Re "run a webdev service": Do you mean "run a WebDAV service"? Or "run a web development service"?
– Peter Mortensen Nov 17, 2019 at 22:46
 6

Since you have created an image from the Dockerfile, the image currently is not in active state. In
order to work you need to run this image inside a container.

The $ docker images command describes how many images are currently available in the local
repository. and

docker ps ‐a

shows how many containers are currently available, i.e. the list of active and exited containers.

There are two ways to run the image in the container:

$ docker run [OPTIONS] IMAGE[:TAG|@DIGEST] [COMMAND] [ARG...]

In detached mode:

‐d=false: Detached mode: Run container in the background, print new container id

In interactive mode:

‐i :Keep STDIN open even if not attached

Here is the Docker run command

$ docker run image_name:tag_name

For more clarification on Docker run, you can visit Docker run reference.

It's the best material to understand Docker.

ShareFollow edited Nov 17, 2019 at 22:54 answered Feb 22, 2019 at 8:36
Peter Mortensen Rajat Tyagi
31k 21 104 131 141 3 10

1
Hey,

Follow only 5 steps to run docker image as a container

1. docker build ‐t dockerImageName .

2. docker run ‐t ‐d ‐p 3030:3000 ‐‐name containerName dockerImageName

You can specified your own new containerName

3. Check container is running type

docker ps ‐all 4. Finally open your google chrome and type localhost:3030

You have successfully run docker image as a container Congrats :﴿

5. If docker container is in exited state then Type below command to Run

docker start ContainerId

ShareFollow answered Jul 28, 2022 at 6:58

Saurabh Kumar
37 1 5

$ docker images
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED
jamesmedice/marketplace latest e78c49b5f380 2 days ago
jamesmedice/marketplace v1.0.0 *e78c49b5f380* 2 days ago

$ docker run ‐p 6001:8585 *e78c49b5f380*

ShareFollow
ShareFollow answered Sep 16, 2019 at 11:40
Tiago Medici
1,904 22 22

2 An explanation would be in order. – Peter Mortensen Nov 17, 2019 at 22:57

For those who had the same problem as well, but encountered an error like

rpc error: code = 2 desc = oci runtime error: exec failed: container_linux.go:247: starting
container process caused "exec: \"bash\": executable file not found in $PATH"

I added an entry point that was worked for me:

docker run ‐it ‐‐entrypoint /bin/sh for the images without Bash.

Example ﴾from the approved example﴿:

run ‐it ‐‐entrypoint /bin/sh ubuntu:12.04

Reference: https://gist.github.com/mitchwongho/11266726

ShareFollow edited Nov 17, 2019 at 22:57 answered Sep 3, 2019 at 3:22
Peter Mortensen Raihanhbh
31k 21 104 131 67 10

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