Docker Orchestration

Inspecting your container

There comes a time in the life of anyone working with containers when you will need to jump into a running container and see what is going on. Fortunately, Docker has just the tool for you in the form of docker exec. The exec subcommand takes two arguments, the name of the container, and the command to run:

$ docker exec -it nginx bash

I slipped an option in there that is important if you are starting an interactive process. The -it option tells Docker that you have an interactive process and that you want a new TTY. This is essential if you want to start a shell:

$ sudo docker exec -it nginx bash                                                                
root@fd8533fa2eda:/# ps ax
PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
1 ?        Ss     0:00 nginx: master process nginx -g daemon off;
6 ? S 0:00 nginx: ...