Multi tool use

Docker container will automatically stop after “docker run -d”

According to tutorial I read so far, use "docker run -d" will start a container from image, and the container will run in background. This is how it looks like, we can see we already have container id.

docker run -d

root@docker:/home/root# docker run -d centos
605e3928cdddb844526bab691af51d0c9262e0a1fc3d41de3f59be1a58e1bd1d


But if I ran "docker ps", nothing was returned.

docker ps

So I tried "docker ps -a", I can see container already exited:

docker ps -a

root@docker:/home/root# docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
605e3928cddd centos:latest "/bin/bash" 31 minutes ago Exited (0) 31 minutes ago kickass_swartz


Anything I did wrong? How can I troubleshoot this issue?

docker run -it -d <image> /bin/bash

9 Answers
9

The centos dockerfile has a default command bash.

bash

That means, when run in background (-d), the shell exits immediately.

-d

Update 2017

More recent versions of docker authorize to run a container both in detached mode and in foreground mode (-t, -i or -it)

-t

-i

-it

In that case, you don't need any additional command and this is enough:

docker run -t -d centos


The bash will wait in the background.
That was initially reported in kalyani-chaudhari's answer and detailed in jersey bean's answer.

vonc@voncvb:~$ d ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
4a50fd9e9189 centos "/bin/bash" 8 seconds ago Up 2 seconds wonderful_wright


Original answer (2015)

As mentioned in this article:

Instead of running with docker run -i -t image your-command, using -d is recommended because you can run your container with just one command and you don’t need to detach terminal of container by hitting Ctrl + P + Q.

docker run -i -t image your-command

-d

However, there is a problem with -d option. Your container immediately stops unless the commands are not running on foreground.
Docker requires your command to keep running in the foreground. Otherwise, it thinks that your applications stops and shutdown the container.

-d

The problem is that some application does not run in the foreground. How can we make it easier?

In this situation, you can add tail -f /dev/null to your command.
By doing this, even if your main command runs in the background, your container doesn’t stop because tail is keep running in the foreground.

tail -f /dev/null

So this would work:

docker run -d centos tail -f /dev/null


A docker ps would show the centos container still running.

docker ps

From there, you can attach to it or detach from it (or docker exec some commands).

docker exec

docker exec -it <yourContainer> bash

According to this answer, adding the -t flag will prevent the container from exiting when running in the background. You can then use docker exec -i -t <image> /bin/bash to get into a shell prompt.

-t

docker exec -i -t <image> /bin/bash

docker run -t -d <image> <command>


It seems that the -t option isn't documented very well, though the help says that it "allocates a pseudo-TTY."

tail -f /dev/null

docker run -t -d --name mysql -p 3306:3306 mysql

Hi this issue is because docker containers exit if there is no running application in the container.

-d


option is just to run a container in deamon mode.

So the trick to make your container continuously running is point to a shell file in docker which will keep your application running.You can try with a start.sh file

Eg: docker run -d centos sh /yourlocation/start.sh


This start.sh should point to a never ending application.

In case if you dont want any application to be running,you can install monit which will keep your docker container running.
Please let us know if these two cases worked for you to keep your container running.

monit

All the best

A Docker container runs a process (the "command" or "entrypoint") that keeps it alive. The container will continue to run as long as the command continues to run.

In your case, the command (/bin/bash, by default, on centos:latest) is exiting immediately (as bash does when it's not connected to a terminal and has nothing to run).

/bin/bash

centos:latest

Normally, when you run a container in daemon mode (with -d), the container is running some sort of daemon process (like httpd). In this case, as long as the httpd daemon is running, the container will remain alive.

-d

httpd

What you appear to be trying to do is to keep the container alive without a daemon process running inside the container. This is somewhat strange (because the container isn't doing anything useful until you interact with it, perhaps with docker exec), but there are certain cases where it might make sense to do something like this.

docker exec

(Did you mean to get to a bash prompt inside the container? That's easy! docker run -it centos:latest)

docker run -it centos:latest

A simple way to keep a container alive in daemon mode indefinitely is to run sleep infinity as the container's command. This does not rely doing strange things like keeping STDIN open in daemon mode.

sleep infinity

$ docker run -d centos:latest sleep infinity
$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
d651c7a9e0ad centos:latest "sleep infinity" 2 seconds ago Up 2 seconds nervous_visvesvaraya


You can accomplish what you want with either:

docker run -t -d <image-name>


or

docker run -i -d <image-name>


or

docker run -it -d <image-name>


The command parameter as suggested by other answers (i.e. tail -f /dev/null) is completely optional, and is NOT required to get your container to stay running in the background.

Also note the Docker documentation suggests that combining -i and -t options will cause it to behave like a shell.

See:

https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/run/#foreground

execute command as follows :

docker run -t -d <image-name>


if you want to specify port then command as below:

docker run -t -d -p <port-no> <image-name>


verify the running container using following command:

docker ps


-t -d

-i -d

Docker requires your command to keep running in the foreground. Otherwise, it thinks that your applications stops and shutdown the container.

So if your docker entry script is a background process like following:

/usr/local/bin/confd -interval=30 -backend etcd -node $CONFIG_CENTER &


The '&' makes the container stop and exit if there are no other foreground process triggered later.
So the solution is just remove the '&' or have another foreground CMD running after it, such as

tail -f server.log


Maybe it is just me but on CentOS 7.3.1611 and Docker 1.12.6 but I ended up having to use a combination of the answers posted by @VonC & @Christopher Simon to get this working reliably. Nothing I did before this would stop the container from exiting after it ran CMD successfully. I am starting oracle-xe-11Gr2 and sshd.

Dockerfile

...
RUN ssh-keygen -t rsa -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key -N '' && systemctl enable sshd
...
CMD /etc/init.d/oracle-xe start && /sbin/sshd && tail -f /dev/null


Then adding -d -t and -i to run

docker run --shm-size=2g --name oracle-db -d -t -i -p 5022:22 -p 5080:8080 -p 1521:1521 centos-oracle:7.3.1611


Finally after hours of bashing my head against the wall

ssh -v root@127.0.0.1 -p 5022
...
root@127.0.0.1's password:
debug1: Authentication succeeded (password).


For whatever reason the above will exit after executing CMD if the tail -f is removed, or any of the -t -d -i options are omitted.

I have explained it in the following post that has the same question.

How to retain docker alpine container after "exit" is used?

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