How do you attach and detach from Docker's process?

Question

I can attach to a docker process but Ctrl+c doesn\'t work to detach from it. exit basically halts the process.

What\'s the recomm

Answer 1

I think this should depend on the situation.Take the following container as an example:

# docker run -it -d ubuntu
91262536f7c9a3060641448120bda7af5ca812b0beb8f3c9fe72811a61db07fc
# docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES
91262536f7c9        ubuntu              "/bin/bash"         5 seconds ago       Up 4 seconds                            serene_goldstine

(1) Use "docker attach" to attach the container:

Since "docker attach" will not allocate a new tty, but reuse the original running tty, so if you run exit command, it will cause the running container exit:

# docker attach 91262536f7c9
exit
exit
# docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS                     PORTS               NAMES
91262536f7c9        ubuntu              "/bin/bash"         39 minutes ago      Exited (0) 3 seconds ago                       serene_goldstine

So unless you really want to make running container exit, you should use Ctrl+p + Ctrl+q.

(2) Use "docker exec"

Since "docker exec" will allocate a new tty, so I think you should use exit instead of Ctrl+p + Ctrl+q.

The following is executing Ctrl+p + Ctrl+q to quit the container:

# docker exec -it 91262536f7c9 bash
root@91262536f7c9:/# ps -aux
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root         1  0.0  0.0  18160  1908 ?        Ss+  04:03   0:00 /bin/bash
root        15  0.0  0.0  18164  1892 ?        Ss   04:03   0:00 bash
root        28  0.0  0.0  15564  1148 ?        R+   04:03   0:00 ps -aux
root@91262536f7c9:/# echo $$
15

Then login container again, you will see the bash process in preavious docker exec command is still alive (PID is 15):

# docker exec -it 91262536f7c9 bash
root@91262536f7c9:/# ps -aux
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root         1  0.0  0.0  18160  1908 ?        Ss+  04:03   0:00 /bin/bash
root        15  0.0  0.0  18164  1892 ?        Ss+  04:03   0:00 bash
root        29  0.0  0.0  18164  1888 ?        Ss   04:04   0:00 bash
root        42  0.0  0.0  15564  1148 ?        R+   04:04   0:00 ps -aux
root@91262536f7c9:/# echo $$
29