Docker container will automatically stop after docker run -d

Question

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   root docker  home root  docker run -d centos 605e3928cdddb844526bab691af51d0c9262e0a1fc3d41de3f59be1a58e1bd1d   But if I ran  docker ps   nothing was returned   So I tried  docker ps -a   I can see container already exited   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

User · Answer

Background

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).

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.

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.

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

Solution

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 allocating a TTY in daemon mode. Although it does rely on doing strange things like using sleep as your primary command.

$ 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

Alternative Solution

As indicated by cjsimon, the -t option allocates a "pseudo-tty". This tricks bash into continuing to run indefinitely because it thinks it is connected to an interactive TTY (even though you have no way to interact with that particular TTY if you don't pass -i). Anyway, this should do the trick too:

$ docker run -t -d centos:latest

Not 100% sure whether -t will produce other weird interactions; maybe leave a comment below if it does.

User · Answer

Running docker with interactive mode might solve the issue   Here is the example for running image with and without interactive mode  chaitra RSK-IND-BLR-L06   dockers  sudo docker run -d -t -i test again1 0 b6b9a942a79b1243bada59db19c7999cfff52d0a8744542fa843c95354966a18  chaitra RSK-IND-BLR-L06   dockers  sudo docker ps  CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES  chaitra RSK-IND-BLR-L06   dockers  sudo docker run -d -t -i test again1 0 bash c3d6a9529fd70c5b2dc2d7e90fe662d19c6dad8549e9c812fb2b7ce2105d7ff5  chaitra RSK-IND-BLR-L06   dockers  sudo docker ps  CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES c3d6a9529fd7        test again1 0        bash               2 seconds ago       Up 1 second                             awesome haibt

User · Answer

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   All the best

User · Answer

Argument order matters  Jersey Beans answer  all 3 examples  worked for me  After quite a bit of trial and error I realized that the order of the arguments matter    Keeps the container running in the background      docker run -t -d  lt image-name gt   Keeps the container running in the foreground  docker run  lt image-name gt  -t -d  It wasn t obvious to me coming from a Powershell background

User · Answer

execute command as follows    docker run -t -d  lt image-name gt    if you want to specify port then command as below   docker run -t -d -p  lt port-no gt   lt image-name gt    verify the running container using following command   docker ps

User · Answer

If you are using CMD at the end of your Dockerfile  what you can do is adding the code at the end  This will only work if your docker is built on ubuntu  or any OS that can use bash     amp  amp   bin bash   Briefly the end of your Dockerfile will look like something like this        CMD ls  amp  amp       amp  amp   bin bash   So if you have anything running automatically after you run your docker image  and when the task is complete the bash terminal will be active inside your docker  Thereby  you can enter you shell commands

User · Answer

I have this code snippet run from the ENTRYPOINT in my docker file   while true do     echo  Press  CTRL C  to stop        sleep 1 done   Run the built docker image as   docker run -td  lt image name gt    Log in to the container shell   docker exec -it  lt container id gt   bin bash

User · Answer

if you want to operate on the container  you need to run it in foreground to keep it alive

User · Answer

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  lt image gt   bin bash to get into a shell prompt   docker run -t -d  lt image gt   lt command gt    It seems that the -t option isn t documented very well  though the help says that it  allocates a pseudo-TTY

User · Answer

You can accomplish what you want with either   docker run -t -d  lt image-name gt    or  docker run -i -d  lt image-name gt    or  docker run -it -d  lt image-name gt    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

User · Answer

The centos dockerfile has a default command bash  That means  when run in background  -d   the shell exits immediately  Update 2017 More recent versions of docker authorize to run a container both in detached mode and in foreground mode  -t  -i or -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               quot  bin bash quot          8 seconds ago       Up 2 seconds                            wonderful wright  Note that for alpine  Marinos An reports in the comments   docker run -t -d alpine git does not keep the process up  Had to do  docker run --entrypoint  quot  bin sh quot  -it alpine git   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    However  there is a problem with -d option  Your container immediately stops unless the commands keep running in foreground  Docker requires your command to keep running in the foreground  Otherwise  it thinks that your applications stops and shutdown the container    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   So this would work  docker run -d centos tail -f  dev null  A docker ps would show the centos container still running  From there  you can attach to it or detach from it  or docker exec some commands

User · Answer

I had the same issue  just opening another terminal with a bash on it worked for me    create container    docker run -d mcr microsoft com mssql server 2019-CTP3 0-ubuntu containerid 52bbc9b30557   start container   docker start 52bbc9b30557   start bash to keep container running   docker exec -it 52bbc9b30557 bash   start process you need   docker exec -it 52bbc9b30557  path to cool your app

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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  amp    The   amp   makes the container stop and exit if there are no other foreground process triggered later   So the solution is just remove the   amp   or have another foreground CMD running after it  such as  tail -f server log

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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  amp   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     amp  amp  systemctl enable sshd     CMD  etc init d oracle-xe start  amp  amp   sbin sshd  amp  amp  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

User · Answer

I have explained it in the following post that has the same question   How to retain docker alpine container after  quot exit quot  is used

User · Answer

Docker container exits if task inside is done  so if you want to keep it alive even if it does not have any job or already finished them  you can do docker run -di image  After you do docker container ls you will see it running

[docker] Docker container will automatically stop after "docker run -d"

Background

Solution

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