Explore contents of a running container in Docker

This is a short tip how to explorer the contents of a running container in Docker.



Get Docker for windows from here: Docker for Windows First off, we can list our containers with the following command:

docker container ls
Note the CONTAINER ID value. Use this to explore the contents of the running container:

docker exec -it 231 bash

Note that in this example I just have to type the necessary part of the Guid of the CONTAINER ID to discern it from others and issue an exec command with the parameters -it (interactive and pseudo tty session) followed with bash. From now on, I can explore the container easily: ls -al The following image sums this up:

Another cool tip, how about installing a new nginx web server on port 81 on your Windows Dev Box? Simple!

docker run --detach publish 81:80 nginx

And the following command pulls a windowsservercore docker image (10,7 GB size) and starts it up and gives you a pseudo-terminal which is interactive:

docker run -it microsoft/windowsservercore