How to Explore Docker Container's File System ?

This tutorial guides you on how to explore docker container’s file system in different ways. Let’s see three ways to explore files in docker container; using docker exec, using docker commit and via sshd daemon.

Explore docker container’s file system – docker exec

Let’s use standard ubuntu image for our example. Docker provides docker exec command which can be used for running a new command in a running docker container. Note, the command runs only when the docker container is in running state.

For example, let’s say when you use docker exec command for the docker container which is not in a running state as shown below, it will result in the following error.

$ docker images

REPOSITORY             TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
ubuntu                 latest              1e4467b07108        9 days ago   
       73.9MB

$ docker run ubuntu

$ docker ps -a

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS                     PORTS               NAMES
e0c0d1e1907b        ubuntu              "/bin/bash"         5 seconds ago       Exited (0) 4 seconds ago                       dazzling_roentgen

$ docker exec -it e0c0d1e1907b /bin/bash

Error response from daemon: Container e0c0d1e1907b1023ac8fb7ba64a28ddc87c7ea09ed8a2725a19613e2caa7c8af is not running

First, start the docker container using the following command in one terminal. We are running this command just to ensure the docker container is up and running.

$ docker run --rm -it ubuntu bash
root@06c426928f03:/# echo hello
hello

Then, in the another terminal try to run docker ps command and check if the container is up and running.

$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES
06c426928f03        ubuntu              "bash"              28 seconds ago      Up 27 seconds                           lucid_jennings

Finally execute the following docker exec command in the second terminal. This command will start a bash session on the docker container and login you as root user, then you can use ls command.

$ docker exec -it 06c426928f03 /bin/bash

root@06c426928f03:/# ls
bin  boot  dev  etc  home  lib  lib32  lib64  libx32  media  mnt  opt  proc  root  run  sbin  srv  sys  tmp  usr  var

Explore using docker commit

Now, let’s see how to explore docker container’s file system using docker commit command. First, let’s create an copy image from the existing container file system (STEP 3). Then explore the file system using docker run to start an interactive bash session in the new/copy docker image.

//STEP 1
$ docker images
REPOSITORY          TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
ubuntu              latest              1e4467b07108        10 days ago         73.9MB

//STEP 2
$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS                      PORTS               NAMES
5f03045d1048        ubuntu              "/bin/bash"         25 seconds ago      Exited (0) 22 seconds ago                       nifty_chandrasekhar

//STEP 3
//copy image from the existing container file system
$ docker commit 5f03045d1048 ubuntu_copy
sha256:126d7f93268b4591a9a1b91c8ee90f76619d15969aa633585f12ba39302287b2

//STEP 4
$ docker images
REPOSITORY          TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
ubuntu_copy         latest              126d7f93268b        4 seconds ago       73.9MB
ubuntu              latest              1e4467b07108        10 days ago         73.9MB

//STEP 5
$ docker run -it ubuntu_copy /bin/bash
root@c7b726f7cf6c:/# ls
bin  boot  dev  etc  home  lib  lib32  lib64  libx32  media  mnt  opt  proc  root  run  sbin  srv  sys  tmp  usr  var

Explore file system using SSH

The third way is to install SSH in docker container and run ssh daemon. So that you can explore container’s file system continuously whenever needed by doing SSH in to the docker container.

Then run the following docker run command to run sshd daemon in the container.

docker run -d -p 22 ubuntu_copy /usr/sbin/sshd -D

Do docker ps and check which port to connect. Finally you can ssh in to the docker container and check the file system any time continuously.

Hope it helped 🙂

Also See:

How to Explore Docker Container’s File System ?

Explore docker container’s file system – docker exec

Explore using docker commit

Explore file system using SSH

References: