Use the Docker command line
To list available commands, either run docker
with no parameters or execute docker help
:
$ docker Usage: docker [OPTIONS] COMMAND [arg...] docker daemon [ --help | ... ] docker [ --help | -v | --version ] -H, --host=[]: The socket(s) to talk to the Docker daemon in the format of tcp://host:port/path, unix:///path/to/socket, fd://* or fd://socketfd. A self-sufficient runtime for Linux containers. ...
Depending on your Docker system configuration, you may be required to preface each docker
command with sudo
. To avoid having to use sudo
with the docker
command, your system administrator can create a Unix group called docker
and add users to it.
For more information about installing Docker or sudo
configuration, refer to the installation instructions for your operating system.
Environment variables
For easy reference, the following list of environment variables are supported by the docker
command line:
-
DOCKER_API_VERSION
The API version to use (e.g.1.19
) -
DOCKER_CONFIG
The location of your client configuration files. -
DOCKER_CERT_PATH
The location of your authentication keys. -
DOCKER_DRIVER
The graph driver to use. -
DOCKER_HOST
Daemon socket to connect to. -
DOCKER_NOWARN_KERNEL_VERSION
Prevent warnings that your Linux kernel is unsuitable for Docker. -
DOCKER_RAMDISK
If set this will disable ‘pivot_root’. -
DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY
When set Docker uses TLS and verifies the remote. -
DOCKER_CONTENT_TRUST
When set Docker uses notary to sign and verify images. Equates to--disable-content-trust=false
for build, create, pull, push, run. -
DOCKER_CONTENT_TRUST_SERVER
The URL of the Notary server to use. This defaults to the same URL as the registry. -
DOCKER_TMPDIR
Location for temporary Docker files.
Because Docker is developed using ‘Go’, you can also use any environment variables used by the ‘Go’ runtime. In particular, you may find these useful:
HTTP_PROXY
HTTPS_PROXY
NO_PROXY
These Go environment variables are case-insensitive. See the Go specification for details on these variables.
Configuration files
By default, the Docker command line stores its configuration files in a directory called .docker
within your $HOME
directory. However, you can specify a different location via the DOCKER_CONFIG
environment variable or the --config
command line option. If both are specified, then the --config
option overrides the DOCKER_CONFIG
environment variable. For example:
docker --config ~/testconfigs/ ps
Instructs Docker to use the configuration files in your ~/testconfigs/
directory when running the ps
command.
Docker manages most of the files in the configuration directory and you should not modify them. However, you can modify the config.json
file to control certain aspects of how the docker
command behaves.
Currently, you can modify the docker
command behavior using environment variables or command-line options. You can also use options within config.json
to modify some of the same behavior. When using these mechanisms, you must keep in mind the order of precedence among them. Command line options override environment variables and environment variables override properties you specify in a config.json
file.
The config.json
file stores a JSON encoding of several properties:
The property HttpHeaders
specifies a set of headers to include in all messages sent from the Docker client to the daemon. Docker does not try to interpret or understand these header; it simply puts them into the messages. Docker does not allow these headers to change any headers it sets for itself.
The property psFormat
specifies the default format for docker ps
output. When the --format
flag is not provided with the docker ps
command, Docker’s client uses this property. If this property is not set, the client falls back to the default table format. For a list of supported formatting directives, see the Formatting section in the docker ps
documentation
Once attached to a container, users detach from it and leave it running using the using CTRL-p CTRL-q
key sequence. This detach key sequence is customizable using the detachKeys
property. Specify a <sequence>
value for the property. The format of the <sequence>
is a comma-separated list of either a letter [a-Z], or the ctrl-
combined with any of the following:
-
a-z
(a single lowercase alpha character ) -
@
(at sign) -
[
(left bracket) -
\\
(two backward slashes) -
_
(underscore) -
^
(caret)
Your customization applies to all containers started in with your Docker client. Users can override your custom or the default key sequence on a per-container basis. To do this, the user specifies the --detach-keys
flag with the docker
attach
, docker exec
, docker run
or docker start
command.
The property imagesFormat
specifies the default format for docker images
output. When the --format
flag is not provided with the docker images
command, Docker’s client uses this property. If this property is not set, the client falls back to the default table format. For a list of supported formatting directives, see the Formatting section in the docker images
documentation
Following is a sample config.json
file:
{ "HttpHeaders": { "MyHeader": "MyValue" }, "psFormat": "table {{.ID}}\\t{{.Image}}\\t{{.Command}}\\t{{.Labels}}", "imagesFormat": "table {{.ID}}\\t{{.Repository}}\\t{{.Tag}}\\t{{.CreatedAt}}", "detachKeys": "ctrl-e,e" }
Notary
If using your own notary server and a self-signed certificate or an internal Certificate Authority, you need to place the certificate at tls/<registry_url>/ca.crt
in your docker config directory.
Alternatively you can trust the certificate globally by adding it to your system’s list of root Certificate Authorities.
Help
To list the help on any command just execute the command, followed by the --help
option.
$ docker run --help Usage: docker run [OPTIONS] IMAGE [COMMAND] [ARG...] Run a command in a new container -a, --attach=[] Attach to STDIN, STDOUT or STDERR --cpu-shares=0 CPU shares (relative weight) ...
Option types
Single character command line options can be combined, so rather than typing docker run -i -t --name test busybox sh
, you can write docker run -it --name test busybox sh
.
Boolean
Boolean options take the form -d=false
. The value you see in the help text is the default value which is set if you do not specify that flag. If you specify a Boolean flag without a value, this will set the flag to true
, irrespective of the default value.
For example, running docker run -d
will set the value to true
, so your container will run in “detached” mode, in the background.
Options which default to true
(e.g., docker build --rm=true
) can only be set to the non-default value by explicitly setting them to false
:
$ docker build --rm=false .
Multi
You can specify options like -a=[]
multiple times in a single command line, for example in these commands:
$ docker run -a stdin -a stdout -i -t ubuntu /bin/bash $ docker run -a stdin -a stdout -a stderr ubuntu /bin/ls
Sometimes, multiple options can call for a more complex value string as for -v
:
$ docker run -v /host:/container example/mysql
Note: Do not use the
-t
and-a stderr
options together due to limitations in thepty
implementation. Allstderr
inpty
mode simply goes tostdout
.
Strings and Integers
Options like --name=""
expect a string, and they can only be specified once. Options like -c=0
expect an integer, and they can only be specified once.
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