How do I get into a Docker container

Question

I recently started working with docker. I'm using the WordPress base image and docker-compose.

I'm trying to ssh into one of the containers to inspect the files/directories that were created during the initial build. I tried to run docker-compose run containername ls -la, but that didn't do anything. Even if it did, I'd rather have a console where I can traverse the directory structure, rather than run a single command. What is the right way to do this with Docker?

Answer 1

docker attach will let you connect to your Docker container, but this isn't really the same thing as ssh. If your container is running a webserver, for example, docker attach will probably connect you to the stdout of the web server process. It won't necessarily give you a shell.

Use the docker exec command is probably what you are looking for; this will let you run arbitrary commands inside an existing container. For example:

docker exec -it <mycontainer> bash