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

Question

So i've been learning docker recently and according to this docker tutorial I was reading, using the "docker run -d" command will start up a new docker container from the referenced image, and this container will run in the background.

This is exactly how I typed it out :

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

But I think my container is not working properly as when I type in the command: docker ps I get nothing.

But when I type in the command: docker ps -a, it shows me the container, but its status is listed as "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

Can anyone help me out? why is it showing the container like this?

Answer 1

The container shell exits immediately as you are using Centos and the centos dockerfile uses bash as its default command, this will happen when you are running a container in the background ( using the -d flag ).

In the latest version of docker you are authorized to run a docker container both in foreground mode as well as the detached mode ( -it flag )

In any case, this should be enough :

docker run -t -d centos

Hope that helped :)

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