Docker information

Note

This document is updated, however, it may be good to read the docker-compose and Dockerfile.* in the repository themselves for the most up-to-date information.

This guide assumes that docker and docker-compose are present on your system.

Starting and Stopping

While docker can be used to start each individual container separately, using docker-compose up --build is the preferred method because it starts all services in the correct order. Pressing ctrl-c will cleanly shutdown interactive docker. Pressing ctrl-c multiple times will kill the running images and leave docker in a somewhat funny state that likely requires running docker-compose down before starting again An additional flag -d can be supplied to run docker in detached mode.

Note

Use docker-compose --file <filename> to select a different configuration

To start a single image, supply its name as an additional argument to docker-compose up. To stop all images, including in detached mode, run docker-compose down.

Cleaning docker

The build instructions suggest using the --build flag which will build images before starting the containers. Additionally, one may want to use the --force-recreate flag to recreate images even if ther configuration and images haven’t changed. The following commands can be used (in this order) to further clean out docker and start with a cleaner state (-f with get rid of the confirmation):

  • Use docker container prune to prune all stopped containers

  • [Optional] Use docker image prune to remove all unused images

  • Use docker volume prune to prune all unused volumes

if explicit pruning does not work, use docker system prune -f -a --volumes to purge all.

Misc

  1. Several things to keep in mind while running Web monitor via docker:

    • The option -d will start the web-monitor in the background. Remove it if you want to run the web-monitor in the foreground.

    • The command docker container logs CONTAINER_NAME will provide the runtime log for given container, where CONTAINER_NAME can be found via docker ps.

    • Add option --build to force rebuild the container if the local changes are not reflected in the container.

    • Add option --force-recreate to recreate all images if --build does not work.

    • If all fails (e.g. the local changes are not showing up in the runtime instances):

      • stop the instance with docker-compose down.

      • prune caches of images, container and volumes.

      • restart the instance with docker-compose up -d --build --force-recreate.

  2. If you cannot find web-monitor at localhost, it is possible that the standard http port 80 is used by another application. Here are two possible solutions:

    • Stop the service running at port 80 and restart the instance.

    • Modify the port of nginx in the docker compose file to use a different port (e.g. change to 81:80).