379
votes

Is there any way to start an interactive shell in a container using Docker Compose only? I've tried something like this, in my docker-compose.yml:

myapp:
  image: alpine:latest
  entrypoint: /bin/sh

When I start this container using docker-compose up it's exited immediately. Are there any flags I can add to the entrypoint command, or as an additional option to myapp, to start an interactive shell?

I know there are native docker command options to achieve this, just curious if it's possible using only Docker Compose, too.

10
This is not supposed to work. For example, if you have multiple images with /bin/sh entrypoint in your compose file, what should it do?Xiongbing Jin
Hmh, why not just start multiple shells? For example, a shell into a mysql container to work with mysql cli, and a shell into a backup container to run backup commands?drubb
what about docker-compose run myapp ?ivoba
@ibova The problem is with docker-compose run myapp is that it won't expose the ports. So you have to use docker-compose run --service-ports myapp but still its not very convenient.The Fool
@codentary It is just YAML, so quotes are optional in this particular case.Gogowitsch

10 Answers

510
votes

You need to include the following lines in your docker-compose.yml:

version: "3"
services:
  app:
    image: app:1.2.3
    stdin_open: true # docker run -i
    tty: true        # docker run -t

The first corresponds to -i in docker run and the second to -t.

298
votes

The canonical way to get an interactive shell with docker-compose is to use:

docker-compose run --rm myapp

You can set stdin_open: true, tty: true, however that won't actually give you a proper shell with up, because logs are being streamed from all the containers.

You can also use

docker exec -ti <container name> /bin/bash

to get a shell on a running container.

83
votes

In the official getting started example (https://docs.docker.com/compose/gettingstarted/) with the following docker-compose.yml:

version: '3'
services:
  web:
    build: .
    ports:
     - "5000:5000"
  redis:
    image: "redis:alpine"

After you start this with docker-compose up, you can easily shell into either your redis container or your web container with:

docker-compose exec redis sh
docker-compose exec web sh 
63
votes

docker-compose run myapp sh should do the deal.

There is some confusion with up/run, but docker-compose run docs have great explanation: https://docs.docker.com/compose/reference/run

34
votes

If anyone from the future also wanders up here:

docker-compose exec container_name sh

or

docker-compose exec container_name bash

or you can run single lines like

docker-compose exec container_name php -v

That is after you already have your containers up and running

26
votes

Using docker-compose, I found the easiest way to do this is to do a docker ps -a (after starting my containers with docker-compose up) and get the ID of the container I want to have an interactive shell in (let's call it xyz123).

Then it's a simple matter to execute docker exec -ti xyz123 /bin/bash

and voila, an interactive shell.

5
votes

This question is very interesting for me because I have problems, when I run container after execution finishes immediately exit and I fixed with -it:

docker run -it -p 3000:3000 -v /app/node_modules -v $(pwd):/app <your_container_id>

And when I must automate it with docker compose:

version: '3'
services:
    frontend:
        stdin_open: true
        tty: true
        build: 
            context: .
            dockerfile: Dockerfile.dev
        ports: 
            - "3000:3000"
        volumes: 
            - /app/node_modules
            - .:/app

This makes the trick: stdin_open: true, tty: true

This is a project generated with create-react-app

Dockerfile.dev it looks this that:

FROM node:alpine

WORKDIR '/app'

COPY package.json .
RUN npm install

COPY . . 

CMD ["npm", "run", "start"]

Hope this example will help other to run a frontend(react in example) into docker container.

5
votes

If the yml is called docker-compose.yml it can be launched with a simple $ docker-compose up. The corresponding attachment of a terminal can be simply (consider that the yml has specified a service called myservice):

$ docker-compose exec myservice sh

However, if you are using a different yml file name, such as docker-compose-mycompose.yml, it should be launched using $ docker-compose -f docker-compose-mycompose.yml up. To attach an interactive terminal you have to specify the yml file too, just like:

$ docker-compose -f docker-compose-mycompose.yml exec myservice sh

3
votes

You can do docker-compose exec SERVICE_NAME sh on the command line. The SERVICE_NAME is defined in your docker-compose.yml. For example,

services:
    zookeeper:
        image: wurstmeister/zookeeper
        ports:
          - "2181:2181"

The SERVICE_NAME would be "zookeeper".

2
votes

I prefer

docker-compose exec my_container_name bash