How to automatically update your docker containers, if base-images are updated

Question

Say I have a trivial container based on the ubuntu:latest. Now there is a security update and ubuntu:latest is updated in the docker repo .

Answer 1

We use a script which checks if a running container is started with the latest image. We also use upstart init scripts for starting the docker image.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e
BASE_IMAGE="registry"
REGISTRY="registry.hub.docker.com"
IMAGE="$REGISTRY/$BASE_IMAGE"
CID=$(docker ps | grep $IMAGE | awk '{print $1}')
docker pull $IMAGE

for im in $CID
do
    LATEST=`docker inspect --format "{{.Id}}" $IMAGE`
    RUNNING=`docker inspect --format "{{.Image}}" $im`
    NAME=`docker inspect --format '{{.Name}}' $im | sed "s/\///g"`
    echo "Latest:" $LATEST
    echo "Running:" $RUNNING
    if [ "$RUNNING" != "$LATEST" ];then
        echo "upgrading $NAME"
        stop docker-$NAME
        docker rm -f $NAME
        start docker-$NAME
    else
        echo "$NAME up to date"
    fi
done

And init looks like

docker run -t -i --name $NAME $im /bin/bash