Quick tip to access a container without SSH.
Let’s run a simple memcached server:
$ sudo docker run -d -p 11211 bacongobbler/memcached memcached /usr/bin/memcached -m 64 -p 11211 -u memcache -l 0.0.0.0
$ sudo docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
0a9856723f90 192.168.0.127:5042/memcached:latest memcached /usr/bin/m 2 seconds ago Up 2 seconds 0.0.0.0:49153->11211/tcp pensive_pasteur
This is important you must grab the PID of the first running process inside the container, the one with PID 1. So on the host run:
root@docker:~# ps faux |grep memcached
syslog 29123 0.0 0.0 323216 1184 ? Sl 22:40 0:00 \_ memcached /usr/bin/memcached -m 64 -p 11211 -u memcache -l 0.0.0.0
The nsenter command is part of the util-linux package, however it only appeared during the 2.23 release.
Unfortunately, if you are running Ubuntu, the latest version available is 2.20, so you have to install the last version manually.
$ wget https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/v2.24/util-linux-2.24.tar.bz2
$ bzip2 -d -c util-linux-2.24.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
$ cd util-linux-2.24/
$ sudo ./configure --without-ncurses
$ make nsenter
$ cp nsenter /usr/local/bin
Now let’s enter the container:
$ sudo nsenter -m -u -i -n -p -t 29123 /bin/sh
$ sudo ps faux
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 11 0.0 0.0 4396 608 ? S 22:41 0:00 /bin/sh
root 12 0.0 0.0 15272 1100 ? R+ 22:41 0:00 \_ ps faux
memcache 1 0.0 0.0 323216 1184 ? Sl 22:40 0:00 memcached /usr/bin/memcached -m 64 -p 11211 -u memcache -l 0.0.0.0
Handy script:
#!/bin/bash
PID=$(sudo docker inspect --format \{{.State.Pid}}\ $1)
sudo nsenter --target $PID --mount --uts --ipc --net --pid
Use it like this: ./enter-container <container id>.
Tada!